Passion Sunday

When I was younger, Passion Sunday was always called Palm Sunday.  Processions around the church building with newly blessed palms and haunting melodies sung only in Holy Week are memories that will always be with me.

But, in the past twenty or so years, the Church has renamed this last Sunday before Easter Passion Sunday.  The name always felt strange to me until this morning when our priest preached a powerful sermon on the topic of passion.  He talked of people's passion for life, their reluctance to think of their mortality, that uncomfortable and anxiety-inducing truth that we all have to die someday, some of us sooner than others.

Father Gerry suggested that we would all be wise to meditate on two important things, as recommended centuries ago by the early church fathers: our own death and Jesus' death.  And that's not so unusual; I've heard it preached before, probably many times.  But, for some reason (probably the Holy Spirit), it struck me this morning that Jesus was as reluctant to die as I am and that he was just as afraid as I would be if I had just been told that I have a terrible disease, hours of agonizing suffering ahead of me, and only a short time remaining to live.

I know that I too would pray to be spared this suffering, as Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane and I can only hope that I could say sincerely, "But, if it needs to be, thy will be done."  That would be a hard prayer to pray and really mean it.  I've always hoped that my death, hopefully not for a long time yet, will have some meaning to my family and friends.  I'd like to think that I can set a good example of a faith-filled, close-to-Jesus final journey.

But, if even Jesus himself was so afraid to suffer and to die, I can learn some things from that. The first is that it's okay to be afraid; it doesn't mean that I don't have faith.  The second is that I'd better walk as close to God as I can right now, because even Jesus, who was as close to God as a human being can be, still felt the human fear of pain and death.

This is what I will be meditating on in this Holy Week.