Parish News

There seems to be something attractive about monarchy. Perhaps it’s associated with a monarch being out of the ordinary in some way signified by clothes and regalia. Monarchs are set apart, seen, certainly in the English tradition, as being consecrated, reflected in the type of golden priestly robe worn as part of the ceremony. All of us like to see ourselves as being special. In children this takes forms, dressing as a king, queen, princes, princesses or a hero of some kind. I certainly did, perhaps you did too. I suspect that our children do. Perhaps this inbuilt desire of specialness is a tiny glimmer of the God given “God-ness” in our souls. Because of our sinfulness it’s often a distorted glimmer that comes out, more often than not, as vanity and pride. But as God’s children we are all called to greatness, but it is a greatness of heart, a greatness of spirit. The path to this greatness is not clothes, crowns and jewels, but goodness and obedience to the will of God summed up as the love of God and our neighbour. The price of making this greatness real in our lives is high. For Jesus his goodness to others, and his love and obedience to his Father, led him from ministry and service to others to this Palm Sunday a fleeting moment of triumph as he enters Jerusalem. This rapidly becomes rejection; betrayal by one of his friends - Judas; false accusations; repudiation by his closet associate - Peter, then his cruel torture and death. One of the most remarkable things about the sequence of events was that Jesus could have avoided the terrible things that led to his death early on. Think about it, he already knew that he had been betrayed; Judas knew that they would go to the garden as they had been there before, Jesus could have simply not gone to Gethsemane after the supper, either they could have simply gone somewhere else or just melted away. Judas and his associates would have turned up to find no Jesus, therefore no trial and no crucifixion, but crucially for us, and for countless generations before and after us, no resurrection either. No redemption. No reconnection with the life of God. Jesus, the Lamb of God, knows that to reunite humanity with his Father, to free us from the chains of sin, Jesus, the one without sin, needs to offer everything he has, ultimately his life. His death literally coincides with the sacrifice of the Passover lambs in the temple which were to be consumed at the Jewish Passover meal. In the Mass we too consume a lamb, the Lamb of God, in the consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist. The Lamb that we consume does more than liberate us from slavery, as it did for the Jews in Egypt, but our Lamb liberates us from slavery to sin and eternal death. If we are faithful, our Lamb leads us from the captivity of sin to a new homeland of eternal union within the divine life of the Trinity. Something much, much, greater than anything an earthly crown can offer. Through our baptism we are all part of a chosen people and royal priesthood. Matthew, the writer of Sunday's Passion gospel, saw the followers of Jesus as already being a “new Israel”. But in this life each of us carry our crosses. For many of us our experience of a crown in this life will be a crown of thorns – illness, broken relationships, loneliness and isolation; our experience of the crowd may not be praise but ridicule and misunderstanding; for some of our brothers and sisters their earthly lives will be taken from them, like Jesus. But Jesus was in love with humanity to the point of death and beyond to his resurrection, and he still is. Jesus is our King, ever triumphant, ever victorious, who desires to share his throne with each and every one of us. Faithfulness to his teaching and love of the Father, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, makes this possible. There will come a time when we will hear “Look, your king comes to you”, then with the whole of creation we will bend the knee at his name, and acclaim Jesus as Lord to the glory of his Father. I hope and pray that these final days of Lent will go well for you. God bless and keep you all. Fr Chris