Palm Sunday: We have entered Jerusalem!

We have finally entered Jerusalem! We have spent this Lent in the desert, the wilderness, thirsting and pining for God. We have spent this Lent alone with our God.

Now we have joyfully entered Jerusalem waving palm branches in praise and happiness at the entrance of our God, Our King!

This week is Hoy Week. The holiest weeks of the year and nothing remotely compares to it's majesty.

This is the week where we enter Jerusalem waving palm branches in praise of Jesus, but it is also the same week where we will hit his body with reeds and whip him, shredding his flesh.

This is the week where we cry "Hosanna to the Son of David" "This is our King!"But, it is also the week where we will sentence our king to death for being our king! We will mockingly nail "Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum" Jesus Christ, King of the Jews, to his cross.

This is the week where we lay down our clothes on the donkey and along the path of His entrance into Jerusalem, but also will strip Him naked in humiliation.

This is the week where we acclaim "Glory, Laud and Honor", but also the week where we shout and abuse HIm to the point of shame and leave Him with little dignity.

We have entered Jerusalem. We are holding palm branches in praise of our king, but we will by the end of the week be holding nails to affix Him to a tree.

We are not just remembering and recalling theses events, they are real and timeless. This is the holiest week of the year and a week that knows no boundaries of time or space. We are present with our Lord, our King, through it all. This week we walk with Him triumphantly into Jerusalem, but also walk with Him carrying His cross to the place of death.

May we fully enter into the liturgy, the prayer, the scripture and the intimacy of this week. May we bring our whole selves to this journey with Christ and come to know the events of this week as real and meaningful to our lives.

Sixth Sunday OT: He Touched Him

"He stretched out His hand and Touched him"

For 2 years, my senior year of high school and my first year of college, I lived with my grandma and great-grandma. It was a blessing to be able to, not only know my great-grandma, but also live with her. Over that period we got very close, even to the point of calling her one of my best friends. In the last few months of her life, she got quite ill - heart, cancer and old age. I had the honor of helping to care for her on a daily basis and tried to make her comfortable as much as possible.

Each night, for the ten years I knew her and especially the 2 I lived with her, I would give her a hug and kiss as I said "goodnight". Well, in the last days of her life, being touched was painful for her. Her body was so racked in pain that the slightest touch could send her gasping in pain. One night, her pain was so great that I couldn't give her a hug as I had done for a decade because of the pain and discomfort. That night, she died.

"He stretched out His hand and Touched him"

The leper came to Christ. The leper was a man racked in utter pain. Not only was the disease probably unimaginably painful, but he was throbbing with emotional and spiritual pain as well.

As we heard in the first reading, lepers had to be cast out and let others know they were infected. Think about how humiliating that must have been. This man was cast out from his community, his family and friends, the temple and all normal human interaction. He was lonely and in utter darkness. He couldn't do anything he wanted or desired. Every human need, longing and desire was forbidden because of a disease he had not asked for.

It was the custom and law not to touch a leper for fear of contracting the disease yourself and for becoming impure. But, Christ did not come to follow social norms or what was popular or to be politically correct; Christ came to bring Life and Love regardless what man expected.

When the leper  begged Christ to be healed, he was begging Him to be touched, to have his pain taken away, to be loved and accepted and cared for again. The leper was on the brink of death from all he had gone through and endured. Christ saw this, was moved with pity and touched him and he was healed.

Christ is showing us something fundamentally essential. He is telling and showing us that the way of life and love is not through social norms; it is not through doing what is popular or expected, and not through what is safe for me. The way of life and love is through going outside of ourselves and touching others, even if there is great risk to ourselves. Christ Himself risked being infected, made impure and cast out, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that this man needed love, healing and touch.

We are called to touch the lives and hearts of all people, regardless of who they are or the cost to ourselves. We are to operate and act outside of ourselves and give of ourselves wholly and completely without counting the cost. This is the only way to give the love of Christ to others just as He gives it to us.

I couldn't give my grandma a hug that night because the pain was too unbearable for her. But, we are called to 'hug', to love and to 'touch' others so that is hurts us. We are shown that the way of Christ is to live for others and not ourselves. The true touch of love and life is that where I risk a sacrifice of myself. We are called to offer our bodies, comforts and securities for the sake of love, just as Christ did for us.

"He stretched out His hand and Touched him"

Washington Distgust

This most recent bout of political posturing in Washington has got me truly wondering 'where have we come to'?

I am young, I cannot honestly testify to anything other than what I have known in the few years I have been of intelligence to follow and understand the game of politics and the art of government. I can only give witness to the yearning of times when statesmen carried a highly sought status and dignity, a nostalgia for something I have never experienced. I look and listen to these men who hold the highest offices in our country and the president of the this nation, at one time considered the most powerful moan on the planet, succumb to petty ideological stalemates.

I used to be a boy who admired and looked up to the image of the statesman. I admired the dignity, the reprehensibility, the commitment, the status and the power to effect so much - all for the promotion of people and the good. Now, all I see are politicians who effect for a reelection bid, who are in office to seek personal gain, who desire to make the other look bad by childish antics and immature and unintelligent, if at all, debates.

Where has the era gone where men went to Washington to debate, talk, dialogue and work to get problems and challenges met?

I never knew of a time in my life where this was executed, but I know as a boy, I admired a generation that did execute such dignity in their office. I still do admire that image and wish it was the image that populated our capitals. I have just become disappointed and disgusted with how these men, the highest and most noble in our nation, portray themselves and execute the offices they have been given.

This is an issue that I harbor a lot of opinions on and it will be something I will comment on as time goes on.