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

Spring is on the way that will, God willing, become summer. In my former home I had the benefit of a seasonal garden with different things in bloom at different times of the year. I wonder how the many daffodil and bluebell bulbs planted there will be getting into full swing. I also loved seeing the buds on the cherry trees thickening. Seeing nature wakening from its sleep was and is magical, almost supernatural. In these ways we glimpse the perfection of God which he intends for the whole of his creation not just in the seasons but forever. And yet everything in our world and cosmos is effected by something called entropy, the second law of thermodynamics. This is where, over time, there is a tendency in nature for everything to lose order and cohesion; eventually flowers fade, galaxies and stars decay, and we become older; we die. And yet we are more than cells and atoms. It seems to me that every human being since the dawn of time senses this, including people who do not believe in God, who still have a sense of something greater than themselves. At our conception in the womb we take on the image and likeness of God in our souls. At our baptism the Spirit of the living and eternal God is given to us. God pours into us more of his very self in the other sacraments. In the Eucharist we become one with Jesus; at Confirmation we all receive the Holy Spirit, as priests and deacons do again in a particular way at their ordination. Think about it, we are nothing less than the temple of the Holy Spirit. Amazingly, beautifully, by God’s gift, each and every one of us has living within us the living and eternal God. God is not effected by time, is immortal, cannot be killed, and does not decay. What we are called to do is to nurture this divine life in our souls, to turn a spark into a flame by our lives, a flame that lights the way to eternal life. Concerning this Sunday's gospel, at the time of Jesus the Pharisees too had a sense of the eternal destiny of humanity, they believed in the resurrection from the dead but they were unsure what this meant in practical terms. The other main Jewish sect, the Sadducees, did not hold this belief. We see that Martha, Lazarus’ sister, was a Pharisee as she believes in the resurrection. In the gospel, in a few short phrases, Martha also has a journey of faith from Jesus being a person being favoured by God; to Jesus being much more, the Christ (the anointed one), the Son of God, the Messiah, the long awaited saviour. As well as in Sunday's gospel elsewhere we see also Jesus raising others from the dead. As in other traditions, Jewish funerals are big events. In Sunday's gospel the people at the tomb argue about Jesus, why he is there and whether he could have prevented the death in the first place. You can imagine how it’s all very public and must have been deeply upsetting for Martha who, despite everything, keeps faith with Jesus and does what he says, though we see that she doesn’t really know what Jesus is going to do. Take a moment to imagine seeing her brother Lazarus emerging from the tomb, how would you have responded, joy, fear, perhaps both. What would you say to Lazarus? What would you say to Jesus? And yet there more is to come. Sunday's events, stupendous though they are, point towards something far greater. Even though Lazarus was raised from the dead yet he was still mortal – effected by entropy, eventually Lazarus dies again. In a couple of weeks we will hear of another death, this time a very public and humiliating event, the death of Jesus in unimaginable pain and suffering. Again people will think that it is all over; those who hate him rejoice and those who love him hide in grief and fear. But Jesus does not need anyone to roll away the stone from his tomb, he breaks the chain of death and decay; he is the same human Jesus yet he is somehow different, the difference of a radiant immortality, a radiant sense of peace, an offer to all of us of a life without fear. A life of eternal joy and love. Already he stretches out his wounded hand to hold ours in forgiveness, love and tenderness. We all have the seeds of divinity and immortality planted within us; the spring time of our souls is nearly here. I hope and pray that Lent is going well for you. God bless and keep you all. Fr Chris