As I get older, I notice I have more and more mixed feelings about more and more things. There is less certainty about the meaning, or description of many things: Church, eternal life, the nature of the Trinity, being a citizen of the United States, my role as a Catholic priest.
I think of all this as I consider Palm Sunday which we celebrate this weekend. During most of my life, I have appreciated, perhaps simply liked the various special days of our liturgical year. And so with Palm Sunday I have been grateful to have so often presided at this liturgy. I have done that in parishes, many times in retreat centers, and probably in other settings.
We bless the palms. We process into the church. We read again an account of the Passion of Christ. We begin our Holy Week observance.
But for all the nostalgia and memories and the comfort of familiarity, there is the uneasiness that comes as we ponder the story of Christ at this time in his life. He enters Jerusalem in a kind of triumph, and in a few days, people are screaming for his blood.
We see the fickleness of human nature. We see the power of the mob. We see how people who claim a certain loyalty suddenly change in their loyalty. We see the disciples of Jesus running and hiding as he approaches his suffering and death.
So, mixed feelings. The comfort of repeated ritual and liturgy mixed with the reminders of human weakness and the fickleness of our nature.
The backdrop to all this is the array of strange and erratic and violent behavior reported in the news each day in our own time. How can people do some of the things they do to one another? The story of what happened to Jesus two thousand years ago is like a distant image of what goes on day after day in the world.
It is all right to take some comfort in our repeated annual rituals, but we don’t hide from the real issues of our world. We bring all our mixed thoughts and feelings to our prayer. We try to reach out in some form of kindness and compassion where we are able.
We are called again to ponder our faithfulness to Christ, to acknowledge our own weakness, to ask for a deeper, more sincere faith as we again enter Holy Week.
-Fr. Tom Zelinski OFM Cap.
Thank you, Fr. Tom, for your beautiful, thought provoking reflection. Your honesty and sincere thoughts help me on my journey. I find myself questioning more as I get older. I find refuge in my faith by reading the Bible every day and spending more time in prayer.
Thank you, Fr. Tom for your realistic message.
Thanks for the inspiring reflection on Holy Week. Yes, we are reminded of our own humanness and all the suffering present in the world today. We praise and thank God for the constant ever present love as we journey each day. And for the amazing love done for everyone one of us as expressed in the Holy Week journey.by Jesus’ great outpouring of love and doing the will of our Heavenly Father. Blessings on all of us as we journey Holy week to Easter Resurrection.
Thank you for helping me address inside of me the mixture of feelings – there is so much less black & white or actually very little black & white – as Fr Richard Rohr helps us understand in his wonderful book Falling Upward this is 2nd half of life living, it is both & and, non-dual thinking, being comfortable holding in tension ambiguity.
Well said, Fr. Tom! The 1st sentence really hit home with me. Your words and reflection are timely as we head into Holy Week. We have much to ponder and pray for this Easter season.