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Encounter Christ’s Passion

Today we enter into the most solemn week of the liturgical year. We have been preparing for the past six weeks, and now we find ourselves in this Church today holding palm branches to joyfully greet and worship Jesus, our Lord, as He enters into the great mystery of His Passion, Death, and Resurrection.

Besides our greetings and praise, Jesus desires from us our hearts and our love, prepared and purified through our Lenten observances of prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

During this week, we will recall how Jesus gives us everything—His very life and body as an offering to God for our salvation. During this week, we are reminded that He endured the greatest humiliation, anguish, and suffering in order to free us from our sins and open the gates of Heaven. For this reason, as the spirit of the liturgy intensifies, so too should our longing to encounter and accompany Jesus to His Resurrection. Otherwise, it is as if Jesus’ sacrifice is in vain.

I would like to invite each of you to set aside time each day this week to contemplate Jesus Christ and His Love.

In your imagination and your presence at the Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Vigil, and Easter Sunday liturgy try to accompany the Lord in His loneliness, His suffering, His anxiety, His death, and His resurrection. While it is true that we need God, God also needs us. He longs for and waits for our love.

Through our presence and devotion, let us show the Lord that we are grateful for all that He has done for us so that we may experience the true joy of Christ’s resurrection at Easter, and cry out “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”

Yours in Christ,
Father Arthur

PS: Celebrate Holy Week at Our Lady of the Wayside. CLICK HERE for the Holy Week & Easter Schedule.

Readings for Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion: Lectionary 37 and 38