• Luke 19:28-40 (Gospel for the Procession). Luke’s account of Jesus’ messianic entry into Jerusalem heightens the struggle which Jesus will face in the city and temple.
• Isaiah 50:4-7 In the prophecy of Isaiah the third Song of the Suffering Servant combines listening and abject humiliation with dignified strength.
• Philippians 2:6-11. Jesus emptied himself of his divine dignity, to be incarnated in our midst and suffer the humiliation of the cross.
• Luke 22:14-23:56. The Passion according to Luke portrays Jesus more frequently than the other gospels in prayer, in forgiveness, and in concern for others.

Thoughts for your own consideration: By John Gonzalez

I am on a train leaving Washington DC as I reflect on the lectionary readings for Palm Sunday. This past weekend a multitude gathered in the Capitol, marching and advocating for the rights of immigrants, refugees and displaced peoples. I cannot help but consider the similarity between the immigrant march and the historical moment when Jesus was triumphantly entering Jerusalem. The march brought a hundred thousand people to be in solidarity over an issue that concerns all of us. We all felt great. The success that some of us had with our representatives afterwards only fueled these powerful feelings. Likewise we read that Jesus entered Jerusalem with great fanfare. Even as the Pharisees request that the disciples tone down their message Jesus suggested to them that this excitement would continue with the stones themselves. In other words the energy was palpable, just as it was for us this past Saturday.

But even as we began to pack and head back to our respective regions many of us began to reflect on the challenging political atmosphere that is awaiting us. Our congressional representatives applauded this exciting event but they too reminded us of the pragmatic political reality that would compromise this initiative. I feel a deep sense of solidarity with Jesus who immediately after his triumphant entry wept over the city saying,   “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”

During the workshops over the weekend we were reminded of a value that is at the heart of the first reading and the Gospel. The suffering servant is distinguished by his ability to listen, pray and forgive. Issues such as healthcare, abortion and immigration touch people at their core because in some real way they are affected by these issues. This past weekend we in the United States have been affected by all three issues. People react to issues in any number of ways: they can be defensive, reactionary and possibly provocative (for or against the issue) or they may be thoughtful and reasonable and yet here again they may take any number of positions with the issues. The workshops taught us to listen to the legitimate feelings and frustrations of people who will share with us their perspective on these issues with us and to reconcile their feelings and concerns with the broader principles of faith. The Church, like Jesus, is called to be prophetic and to not compromise the values of the Kingdom of God. But in fulfilling our prophetic role we must raise these values while pastorally attending to the feelings and concerns of all the people who will be either in support or against the principles of our Catholic social teachings.

Jesus laments how the greater value of peace eludes the people of Jerusalem. The peace of God flows from the principles of the common good and the preferential option for the poor, principles that we learn from Jesus’ parables and teachings. But when people are challenged by issues that affect them directly, it may be too difficult for them to envision broader community principles that seem to go against their own self-interest. Our challenge is to listen attentively to their stories and to pray with them in hopes that we can walk together in reconciling their issues with the concern of all God’s people.

However there will be times that we will hit an impasse. We may have to endure insult and betrayal. This is perhaps the most challenging role of the suffering servant, but in following the ways of Christ we will be asked to forgive. Jesus forgives Peter, the executioners and the thief. He consoles the women in the midst of his own suffering. Being completely imperfect my own reaction is to vent my own frustrations when I encounter severe and sometimes irrational disagreements on social issues. But this is the challenge we are given in following the Lamb of God. The example of Jesus is to pray and to offer up to God these social challenges. It will be from God that we will get the courage to continue being both prophetic and pastoral.

• Isaiah 43: 16-21. See, I am doing something new; opening a new way through the mighty waters.
• Philippians 3:8-14. I push on to what is ahead – to know the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings and to arrive at resurrection from the dead.
• John 8:1-11. Jesus forgives the adulterous woman. Everyone sins and all have need of forgiveness.

Thoughts for your consideration:  By Stephen Dunn, CP

I am thinking that today’s Liturgy is especially relevant for social justice advocates. It occurs as the liturgical year is carefully guiding us toward the events of Holy Week.  In other words, it is there to assist us in the impossible task of squarely facing the heart of darkness, a place where those dedicated to social justice attempt to walk bravely.

Our time may not be worse than other human epochs, but it surely feels replete with the darkness of war, torture, slavery and so many forms of economic and military oppression.  Perhaps it’s not intensity we feel, although a case might be made for that, but that we are sensitive to the “omnipresence”, the blanket of media attention, so inescapable in our time, relentlessly keeping the brutality of the dark side of life as our constant waking companion.

Media coverage of “honor killings” has transported their horror from far away places to our doorstep.  Not so long ago, we in North America would have read today’s Gospel in terms of a sexual disorder — severely, even excessively, punished. Today we know it to be one of patriarchy’s sickest sins, unaffected by presumed cultural sophistication, present even now in far too many places.  Thinking in that way makes the dilemma Jesus faced much more fundamental than juggling the niceties of moral law.  It has to do with deep human darkness.

Although the incident happens in the vicinity of the Temple, the Gospel account begins with the poignant reminder that Jesus had just returned from the Mount of Olives, the historical place, where he himself is soon to face the ultimate darkness of feeling rejection by the God he called Father.

In the first reading the prophet Isaiah wants his people to remember Yahweh’s ancient intervention to end the darkness of their slavery, by parting the seas, ensuring their escape. It put me in mind of a contemporary “parting of the seas” as described by Fr. Rick Frechette, the Passionist doctor-priest working in Haiti.  He describes, in his new book*, the day kidnappers took the whole Haiti airport road by storm.  Amid the chaos, he and his associates attempted to rescue friends who were deep inside the slum.  The crossfire was too intense, so he decided to wait. “Suddenly, a truck full of heavily armed men, all in black, drove up to the intersection from inside the slum … They shot heavy artillery into the air.  They were dressed like the special police force, but it was easy to see they were frauds.  How?  Because the special police eat well, and are strong from bodybuilding.  These men we so thin; their clothes were hanging off of them.  They were “chimeres” ) ghosts from the slums.  …  Raphael understood at once that they were clearing the way for us to in to get the wounded, which we did…and raced them to town, to the surgeons of Doctors Without Borders”.

“The Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters” declares:  “See, I am doing something new!  Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”

Fr. Rick has learned to be creatively respectful of the heart of goodness as he stands adamantly against the heart of darkness.  Like Paul, speaking to the Philippians in our second reading, he “continues his pursuit” of the heart of goodness “in hope”.  His hope allows him to be both courageously forthright with gang members and tenderly healing of traumatized children, body and soul.

Looking at the Gospel story that way, it seems to me that Jesus is similarly facing down darkness in search of a regeneration of heart:  his, first of all, since it must have seared him to come so close to this barbarity, but also those of the scribes and Pharisees and the terrified woman who was to be the victim of this patriarchal madness.  Scholars tell us that peasants of Jesus’ time would do as he did, “doodle on the ground” when they felt too distraught to engage people directly.  But he masterfully challenged everyone to look into their own hearts:  “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her”. 

And that is why I think this liturgy is so apt for those committed to social justice.  The logic of adjudicating sins to lay blame is opaque to God’s ability to “part the waves” to find a path that reveres human dignity, it does not allow God to “make a new thing” among the people.  Its certitude or sense of rightness stifles hope, which is the lifeblood of the heart of goodness in the environment of darkness.  Fr. Rick is fond of saying “think with your heart”.  The results, in faith hope and charity, are as remarkable as “neither will I condemn you, go, and walk not in darkness”.

• Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18. By a covenant God renewed the promise to Abram (Abraham) of many descendants and their own land.
• Philippians 3:17-4:1. We eagerly await the coming of our savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will then give a new form to our lowly body.
• Luke 9:28-36. At Jesus’ transformation, Moses and Elijah appear and speak with him of his “exodus”.

Thoughts for your consideration: By John Gonzalez

In the fourth Chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans St. Paul offers a wonderful perspective on the faith and hope that Abraham had when God made his covenant with him:

He believed, hoping against hope, that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was, “Thus shall your descendants be.”

The readings today reflect the Christian spirituality of hoping against hope. In Genesis, Abraham accepts this promise that God makes with him in faith and he does so until his dying day since even then his only son, Isaac, never possesses the Promised Land as his own. In the second reading Paul, who at this time is mindful of his own impending death, instructs the early Christian community to place their hopes not in the tangible goods of this world whose “God is their stomach and their glory is in their “shame.”” Instead Paul tells them to place their hope in their “citizenship” in heaven and in Jesus Christ who “will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body.”

And then we finally come to the Gospel passage where immediately sandwiched between the first and second affirmation of His own passion and death Jesus is transfigured with Moses and Elijah in the presence of the apostolic pillars of the early church. In this instance Peter, James and John are shown the transfigured glory that is to come and they placed their hope and faith in this new covenant even though they could neither comprehend it in the moment nor easily accept that negative social ramifications that is accompanied with following the transfigured Christ.

Like Abraham, Paul, and the first Apostles we too are called to hope against hope. We are called to place our hope not in the tangible and social dimensions of our reality but in a mystical and unseen purpose that transcends these social dimensions. This message from Scripture is all the more vital for us who are living in these difficult times. We have placed our hopes in economic and political ideologies that have unraveled. Here in the United States and throughout the western world we have become complacent with a certain lifestyle that is no longer sustainable. Even now, as we are struggling with the economic and social challenges of our time, are solutions are still based in the hope of bringing back a social model that was comfortable for many of us. But this is not the hope that Scripture is offering us.

Our hope is in a cosmological vision that transcends our reality but which also dictates our reality. The reason our former lifestyle is no longer feasible is because it was never sustainable. The principles of Catholic social teachings are calling us to envision a hope of a transfigured world where the love of God is visibly expressed through the deepening of our relationship and concern for one another and for the dignity of creation itself. In the Encyclical Spe Salvi Pope Benedict XVI tells us that: “Our hope is always essentially also hope for others; only thus is it truly hope for me too.”

Let us take some time to reflect on the readings and to consider the Christian message of hoping against hope in relationship to shared concern for all living things and in light of the social, economic and environmental situation we are facing. I also encourage any Catholic who would like to deepen their understanding of Christian hope to download or purchase the Encyclical Spe Salvi and to meditate on the pastoral message that Pope Benedict XVI is offering us in this encyclical letter.

• Zephaniah 3:14-18a -The prophet composes a hymn of hope for Jerusalem and the temple where “the Lord is in your midst.”
• Philippians 4:4-7 – Rejoice in the Lord always … The Lord is near. Present your needs to God. Then God’s own peace, beyond your comprehension, will stand guard over your hearts and minds.
• Luke 3:10-18 – John the Baptist preached reform within people’s daily round of duties and announced the one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit.

Thoughts for your consideration: by Fr. Sebastian MacDonald, CP

On December 10^th, there was a celebration of Human Rights Day.  This should be a reason for rejoicing, in the spirit of this Sunday’s joy (Gaudete Sunday) that the Messiah’s coming is near at hand.  For the emergence of human rights as a distinctly recognizable feature of human existence has been a long time coming.

But wouldn’t you know that, just as it emerges out of the dust bin of history, it encounters the danger of another immersion into forgetfulness. The concept of human rights seems to be taken for granted and people pick and choose which rights they wish to defend and which ones they wish to violate. Some promote economic rights while others defend only political rights. Some skip over human rights and prioritize the rights of animals and trees. This process of “dumbing down” universal rights to subjective preferences reduces its significance to the point of asking: why get wrought up over rights when they are as commonplace as dirt?

Perhaps we do better to follow the route laid out by John the Baptist in Luke’s gospel account today, as John engaged in his preaching ministry by the river Jordan.  He chose not to proclaim rights, but obligations.  The word “should” in this account betrays his approach: the crowds ask him: “what should we do?”  And he replied that whoever can should share with another who has nothing.  Likewise, with those lacking food.  And the tax collectors’ question about their “should”, is followed by the soldiers’ similar query.

What’s interesting about this account is that John’s listeners, instead of being “turned off” by John’s list of “shoulds”, “were filled with expectation” because he sounded just like what the Christ ought to be proclaiming: meeting human needs.  For as this account concludes, it points to the “good news”, in John’s remark about a coming baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire, to cleanse, purify and fill the barn.

In other words, the obligations the Baptist laid on his hearers were the foundation of the rights they had every reason to expect at the hands of the Messiah: spiritual rights to freedom from sin, human rights to freedom from foreign occupation.  The roots of the U.S. Bill of Rights and the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights lay hidden here.

So on this Gaudete (rejoicing) Sunday let us make our own the upbeat expectations of the crowds, the tax collectors, and the soldiers that the obligations they acknowledge trigger a sense of the rights to be cherished.  This joy reflects that of the prophet Zephaniah who sees the Lord removing judgment from his people, by turning away the enemies who trampled their rights.  And it unites us with the Philippian Christians in their joy that “the peace of God that surpasses all understanding” will endow their hearts and minds—another basic entitlement as Christians.

Human rights are fundamental freedoms coming into their own, once the obligations facing us are satisfied.  When the primordial obligation owed God is met, freedom of a religious kind is born.  For freedom of religion is humankind’s basic freedom, underlying all the rest.  The opportunity to approach God endows the human person with a dignity unsurpassed by any other quality the human person might come by, whether that be the faculty of reason or freedom.  People argue over rights vs. entitlements vs. privileges vs. merits vs. benefits vs. gifts.  But, on a scale of 1 to 10, the ability to approach God through religious practices rates a 10, ahead of any other human endowment.  That is why the very first sentence in the very first of the 27 Amendments to the U.S. Constitution (the first 10 of which are called The Bill of Rights) reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”  And for this reason we rejoice on this Sunday as, with the people around John the Baptist, we await one mightier than he, who is coming as the center of our religious faith, and the origin of our rights.

• Baruch 5:1-9.  The Glory breaks over the new Jerusalem and God’s people return to their homeland.
• Phil 1: 4-6, 8-11. Paul prays for the completion of God’s holiness and charity among these, his favorite converts.
• Luke 3:1-6. John the Baptist is introduced amidst the data of world history.

Thoughts for your consideration: By John Gonzalez

The readings for the second week of advent offer us a peaceful meditation on hope. All three readings are based on the theme that God’s ultimate restoration of our broken humanity will take place. In the first reading Baruch offers a joyful image for Israel’s restoration from the Babylonian exile. Israel’s hope for God’s glory to once again shine on Israel with mercy and justice will again take place. Baruch follows the prophetic tradition. The Prophets like Jeremiah and Isaiah prepare Israel for eminent destruction and desolation because Israel has not followed God’s commands. But the Prophets also place all this within the greater context of God’s ultimate mercy, justice and compassion. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and Baruch, who is writing after the exile, is now consoling Israel that God’s glory will come again.

The second reading takes us to Paul’s later days when he is imprisoned and awaiting trial. Paul’s thoughts, as he writes this letter, are with the community he has left behind. As he fondly considers them he places himself and his cherished community within the ultimate hope that Christ will come again. The gospel reading by Luke sets the stage for the public ministry of John the Baptist. John’s preaching did not occur in an historical vacuum and Luke takes the effort to describe the political and theological setting that leads up to the appearance of John in the Jordan region. It has been 500 years since the Jewish people returned from exile and they are again facing another oppressive political reality. John the Baptist, who prepares the way for Christ, is introduced as part of the prophetic tradition who is now going to break upon the scene of this current historical reality.

Now, 2000 years after the events of John the Baptist, Jesus and Paul, we are again contemplating this peaceful meditation of hope in our time. Christmas has become a highly commercialized holiday. Even those of us like me and my family, who intentionally support the buy nothing alternative to what has become known as black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), still find ourselves caught up in the frenzy of commercially preparing for the Christmas season. We owe it to ourselves as people of faith to take some time to contemplate our hope. Like our predecessors of the first century AD or the fifth century BC we too are living in uncertain times. Advent and Christmas offer us a great opportunity that surpasses any material hope we may have. It offer us the opportunity to center ourselves in these troubled times in the faith filled hope that God’s glory will break in again in our lives and that somehow the economic, emotional, and even physical sufferings of the moment can find meaning in a holistic future that we can build based on the experience of our suffering. In his second encyclical Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI reminds us that:

His Kingdom is not an imaginary hereafter, situated in a future that will never arrive; His kingdom is present wherever he is loved and wherever his love reaches us. His love alone gives us the possibility of soberly persevering day by day, without ceasing to be spurred on by hope, in a world which by its very nature is imperfect. His love is at the same time our guarantee of the existence of what we only vaguely sense and which nevertheless, in our deepest self, we await: a life that is “truly” life.    

Contemplation is a valuable gift. If we take the time to contemplate and be reflective then we are taking the time actually consider what “truly” life is. Reflection and contemplation are gifts that can not only help us individually but also as a social community. Soon the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross will have a conference on “Free Enterprise, Poverty, and the Financial Crisis.” In promoting this conference the director of the Acton Institute, Samuel Gregg, observes that “there is plenty of talk about global poverty and yet it is striking how much of the conversation is very unreflective.” Mr. Gregg goes on to say, “Another problem is that a great deal of development economics is underpinned by deeply materialistic ideologies and deformed anthropologies of man. But we know that diminished poverty is only partly an economic and material question. It has moral, spiritual, legal, cultural, and institutional dimensions.”

During the second week of Advent let us take the time to reflect on God’s ultimate restoration for us and our society based on the hope that God loves us all and that we in turn can offer that same love and dignity to each other.

• Gospel for the Procession of Palms: Mark 11:1-10 or John 12:12-16
• Isaiah 50:4-7
• Philippians 2:6-11
• Mark 14:1–15:47 or Mark 15:1-39

Thoughts for Your Consideration: by John Gonzalez, CPP

This week we celebrate Palm Sunday. As I read the lectionary readings I am struck by the following line from Paul’s letter to the Philippians: “Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.” This line raises a great paradox within the Christian faith. Through his relationship with God Jesus was very much aware of his great dignity, but this status does not translate into social greatness, rather it takes the humble form of slavery. This paradox works both ways, as can be seen in Isaiah’s prophecy regarding the suffering servant.  He tells us that even after countless abuses the servant of the Lord does not suffer disgrace since “the Lord God helps me.”

Recently I have been reflecting on a line from Galatians which demonstrates this paradox more clearly in associating two words that seem mutually exclusive, Freedom and Slavery. “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.” (Gal. 5:13)

What could this possibly mean: to be free so that we can be slaves to one another? To celebrate the dignity of our God given humanity by humbly serving the human community? Does this abolish the concepts of Human Rights which we as a nation have championed since the time of our American foundation; do we then ignore the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which our Church has championed through the Encyclical Pacem in Terris?

As Saint Paul the Apostle would reply “By no means.” By Christ’s resurrection the dignity of our humanity has been reconciled with God. This was the freedom and equality that Paul spoke of in Galatians and Philippians. In affirming this dignity we affirm the civil, political, economic and social rights that we inherent in our redeemed humanity. But our responsibility in affirming our own dignity is to serve the dignity of all humanity since we have all been redeemed by the Cross of Christ. Paul reminds us that because Christ Jesus “did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited” God and humanity are reconciled.

The Gospel reading is the Passion narrative according to Mark. At this point we will struggle with the difficult image of Christ’s unbearable suffering and again we are challenged to accept His dignity in the midst of this grave social injustice. Keep in mind the place of the centurion in the Passion narrative according to Mark. While Jesus’ passion and death may not be a socially acceptable display of divine dignity it does seem to touch the hearts of those who witness this event, so that a pagan centurion can look on Jesus dying on the Cross and silently say to himself “Truly this man was God’s Son!”

We are called to celebrate our own dignity by placing it at the service of God and humanity. In doing this we, as Americans, are not only being witnesses to the incarnation, we are also giving witness to the theological vision of our own Declaration of Independence. While we recognize the inalienable rights which are endowed to us by the Creator, we also recognize our responsibility to uphold each others’ dignity when we “mutually pledging to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

Questions for Reflection in your Faith Sharing Group:

• How do you reconcile the divine dignity of Jesus with the reality of His passion?
• Where do you find hope in the image of suffering servant? In the Passion of Jesus?
• Reflect on the Christian virtue of Freedom as discussed in the quotes and reflection above.
  • How are you challenged by this apparent paradox?
  • Consider people like Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy and Mother Theresa. In what ways did these wonderful servants of humanity seem free?
  • Have you witnessed other men and women who have done great public service? How do there actions make you feel? What seems to be driving their actions?
• How do you see yourself as one sharing in the dignity and freedom of God? Based on this identity how do you address issues like, war, violence of all sorts, selfishness, failure, injustice, discrimination, poverty, etc.?