LOVE THAT LASTS FOREVER

Scripture-2, 14-24 (NRSV): Psalm 118:1

Do you ever need to have things repeated to you in order for you to remember them? If you are a parent, do you ever find yourself repeating things to your children? I must admit that I find myself needing repetition much more now than in the past. As I contemplated today’s scripture reading from the Psalms, I noticed all of the words that are repeated for us. Give thanks. His steadfast love endures forever. Salvation.Strength/strong. I shall not die/He did not give me over to death.

With Easter fast approaching, there is such hope in this scripture reading. We have much to be thankful for! Christ is strong and victorious. He is our salvation. His love endures forever.

Isn’t that what we all desire? We desire a love that lasts forever. Sometimes we look at that phrase through our humanness and we may have a hard time imagining an enduring love. Possibly something has happened in our lives to make us doubt that love can last forever. But we are promised the enduring love of Christ. We have a strong protector who is victorious over death and who loves us.

During this season of Lent and Easter, what words need to be repeated not only in your head but in your heart? I challenge you to look at today’s scripture passage and see what word or phrase touches you. Repeat that phrase each day, maybe even multiple times per day, and allow the words to flow from your head straight into your heart. We are loved with an everlasting love. This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!

Scripture: Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24 (NRSV)

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever!

2Let Israel say, “His steadfast love endures forever.”

14The Lord is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation.

15There are glad songs of victory in the tents of the righteous: “The right hand of the Lorddoes valiantly;

16the right hand of the Lord is exalted; the right hand of the Lord does valiantly.”

17I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord.

18The Lord has punished me severely, but he did not give me over to death.

19Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.

20This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it.

21I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.

22The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.

23This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.

24This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

WHAT IS PALM SUNDAY ?

 What is Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday is the day we celebrate the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, one week before His resurrection (Matthew 21:1–11). As Jesus entered the holy city, He neared the culmination of a long journey toward Golgotha. He had come to save the lost (Luke 19:10), and now was the time—this was the place—to secure that salvation. Palm Sunday marked the start of what is often called “Passion Week,” the final seven days of Jesus’ earthly ministry. Palm Sunday was the “beginning of the end” of Jesus’ work on earth.

Palm Sunday began with Jesus and His disciples traveling over the Mount of Olives. The Lord sent two disciples ahead into the village of Bethphage to find an animal to ride. They found the unbroken colt of a donkey, just as Jesus had said they would (Luke 19:29–30). When they untied the colt, the owners began to question them. The disciples responded with the answer Jesus had provided: “The Lord needs it” (Luke 19:31–34). Amazingly, the owners were satisfied with that answer and let the disciples go. “They brought [the donkey] to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it” (Luke 19:35).

As Jesus ascended toward Jerusalem, a large multitude gathered around Him. This crowd understood that Jesus was the Messiah; what they did not understand was that it wasn’t time to set up the kingdom yet—although Jesus had tried to tell them so (Luke 19:11–12). The crowd’s actions along the road give rise to the name “Palm Sunday”: “A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road” (Matthew 21:8). In strewing their cloaks on the road, the people were giving Jesus the royal treatment—King Jehu was given similar honor at his coronation (2 Kings 9:13). John records the detail that the branches they cut were from palm trees (John 12:13).

On that first Palm Sunday, the people also honored Jesus verbally: “The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ / ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ / ‘Hosanna in the highest heaven!’” (Matthew 21:9). In their praise of Jesus, the Jewish crowds were quoting Psalm 118:25–26, an acknowledged prophecy of the Christ. The allusion to a Messianic psalm drew resentment from the religious leaders present: “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples!’” (Luke 19:39). However, Jesus saw no need to rebuke those who told the truth. He replied, “I tell you . . . if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out” (Luke 19:40).

Some 450 to 500 years prior to Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem, the prophet Zechariah had prophesied the event we now call Palm Sunday: “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! / Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! / See, your king comes to you, / righteous and victorious, / lowly and riding on a donkey, / on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9). The prophecy was fulfilled in every particular, and it was indeed a time of rejoicing, as Jerusalem welcomed their King. Unfortunately, the celebration was not to last. The crowds looked for a Messiah who would rescue them politically and free them nationally, but Jesus had come to save themspiritually. First things first, and mankind’s primary need is spiritual, not political, cultural, or national salvation.

Even as the coatless multitudes waved the palm branches and shouted for joy, they missed the true reason for Jesus’ presence. They could neither see nor understand the cross. That’s why, “as [Jesus] approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies . . . will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you” (Luke 19:41–47). It is a tragic thing to see the Savior but not recognize Him for who He is. The crowds who were crying out “Hosanna!” on Palm Sunday were crying out “Crucify Him!” later that week (Matthew 27:22–23).

There is coming a day when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Philippians 2:10–11). The worship will be real then. Also, John records a scene in heaven that features the eternal celebration of the risen Lord: “There before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands” (Revelation 7:9, emphasis added). These palm-bearing saints will shout, “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb” (verse 10), and who can measure sum of their joy?

DECREE ON FOOT WASHING

decree on foot washing 

The foot-washing ceremony during the Holy Thursday service will look different in some churches next week. A theologian and liturgist hopes that this change will lead to a recovery of the true meaning of the ritual

A  curious link between the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Jean Vanier and Pope Francis is that each has attracted media attention – somewhat bewildered if not adverse – by their involvement in the washing of feet. 

When Williams introduced the practice to Canterbury in 2003, many regarded it as rather strange behaviour. The Daily Telegraph noted that “cathedral archivists said they could find no record of previous archbishops washing feet at Canterbury Cathedral”. The reader was left with the impression that it was one more silly novelty, possibly imported from Williams’ previous position in Wales, into a settled (and, presumably, almost perfect) routine.

Earlier, in 1998, Jean Vanier had organised a foot-washing liturgy at a meeting of church leaders at the World Council of Churches. The individual reactions of participants are not recorded, but later Vanier, recalling the moment when he saw an Orthodox bishop kneel down and wash the feet of a female American Baptist minister, observed: “Gestures sometimes speak louder and more lastingly than words.” 

Invited to address the prelates of the Anglican Communion during their tense meeting in January, Vanier invited them to wash each other’s feet. Afterwards, the bishops decided to “walk together”, in spite of their differences. Vanier has made foot washing a regular element in the life of L’Arche, the movement he founded that creates communities in which people with and without learning difficulties live together.

Then there is the action of Pope Francis, who, on 28 March 2013, just weeks after being elected pope, when visiting a young offenders’ prison in Rome, washed the feet of some inmates, women and men, as part of his celebration of Holy Week. The event caught the popular imagination and there was a rush among some bishops to follow suit. But there was an even more vehement response from others and their liturgical advisers. They insisted that what the Pope had taken part in was “not a real liturgical foot washing”.

Why this sudden concern to make a distinction between the Pope washing the feet of prisoners and a “real” liturgical foot washing? One wonders how some people define “liturgy”. But perhaps we should not be surprised. Foot washing has always been controversial among Christians. Indeed in our foundation text for all the later ceremonies and liturgies, the Gospel of John, it is presented as a provocation, eliciting open opposition from Peter: “You [speaking to Jesus] will never wash my feet” (13:8). 

The reasons for Peter’s alarm (and why what is virtually a liturgical command in the Gospel has since been minimised to the point of invisibility) are not hard to find: washing one’s feet is a private affair and the whole business of kneeling on the ground, handling dirty, smelly feet and so on, is not exactly elegant. Indeed, in the ancient world, where arranging for the washing of the feet of one’s guests was the mark of a sophisticated host (Genesis 18:4 for example), the task would be delegated to the most menial female slave.

The fact that these actions by Williams, Vanier and Francis attracted such attention might be explained as simply the reporters’ ignorance of liturgy or of the stories told about Jesus’ final Passover Supper, or perhaps it is simply that the notion that every Christian leader should recall that “whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all” (Mark 10:44) has been almost lost. However, it also reveals simple incomprehension: the vast majority of Christians have never seen, much less experienced, a foot washing.

Foot washing was practised in the early churches (1 Timothy 5:10) but we do not know how widely – nor at what point – it became a Holy Thursday-only event (as it is, de facto, among the Orthodox churches). In the West, it was a regular monastic action both within communities and as a gesture of welcome to guests. In medieval times, it became an act of kings, showing (with due pomp) their “real” humility. At the Reformation, some churches forgot it completely, as another bit of unnecessary and complex (which it was) ceremonial, while the radical reformers (for example, the Baptists) adopted it as an “ordinance” – but then discovered it to be inconvenient.

Among Catholics, until new rites for Holy Week liturgies were introduced in 1956, it belonged to the ceremonial of bishops and was confined to cathedrals, and was a ritual carried out apart from the principal Holy Week gatherings. In rural cathedrals without a large body of resident clergy, it was simply skipped. Even when it was introduced to parish churches after 1956, little changed. It was presented as an option, but one requiring a choir capable of antiphonal singing, and in the introductory rubric the phrase used was “one could do it if there is a pastoral justification”. As a result, the liturgy was seen in few ordinary parishes – and only then by that small proportion of people who went to the Holy Thursday evening Mass.

A major change in 1969 allowed antiphons to be replaced by similar hymns, making it easier for parishes with ordinary choirs. But a curious interpretation of the ritual had crept into the minds of many who took part. Foot washing was seen as a sort of mime of the events of the Last Supper. 

As a nativity scene was to Christmas, the ceremony of foot washing was to Holy Thursday – hence the need for the right dramatis personae and mise en scène: 12 men (although this number was not specified in the missal) and the priest removing his “outer garment” and wearing a towel. And so the inevitable kerfuffle in many parishes, with priests excluding women from the event, and the annoyance of so many that Pope Francis was “breaking with tradition”.

Now, as a result of a direct intervention by Pope Francis, the situation has been clarified. On 20 December 2014 he wrote to Cardinal Robert Sarah, the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, and in January it was announced that the rubrics in the Roman Missal for the Holy Thursday service have been revised. The group chosen to participate in the ceremony will now represent the variety of individuals that make up the one People of God. It should include men and women, and, if possible, young and old, the healthy and the sick, lay people and clerics and those in the consecrated life. 

Significantly, the decree does not simply permit women to be among those whose feet are to be washed, but states that this group should visibly reflect the gathering’s make-up. Moreover, by citing the Gospels three times, it gives a clear steer on how foot washing can be understood: an experience of how Christians ought to relate to one another.

Foot washing has come to be seen in recent centuries as either a piece of theatre, a showy demonstration of humility by those in power, or as an act of obedience to the command to love the poor (hence “Maundy Money” could replace a royal foot washing). But the text of John is quite explicit: the purpose of foot washing is to help everyone in the community discover how they are to relate to one another as disciples. Each must be prepared to wash the feet of the other. It enacts the mutual relationship of service that constitutes our distinctive community and is the practical face of the love we should have for one another. 

Foot washing has to move from being a quaint ritual – that can be dodged when inconvenient – to being a fulfilment of the Lord’s will for our behaviour when we gather together. It models what it is to be Church.

Thomas O’Loughlin is professor of historical theology at the University of Nottingham and the author of Washing Feet: Imitating the Example of Jesus in the Liturgy Today (Liturgical Press).

SERVANT MESSENGER

The Servant Messenger

The hallmark of the messenger is to receive the word attentively from its source and to deliver the word faithfully to the intended audience. Here in the third song of the servant (cf. 42:1-4; 49:1-6), the people personified as prophetic messenger are once again called to a ministry of perlocutionary acts, speech that comforts and sustains the weary. But the one who would have the tongue of a teacher must have the ear of a student. Morning by morning, the one whose mission it is to speak must start the day by listening.

The message may not be one the servant wants to hear, much less deliver. But the faithful prophet does not recoil or flee. Even if the performance of one’s prophetic duty engenders opposition, abuse and vilification, the response to suffering is shaped by a deeper confidence. The dignity of the messenger is not preserved through retaliation, but by endurance. Violence and insult are not reflected in the face. Nor lodged in the heart. In this there is no shame.

The accusers will have their day, they will stand together and make their case. The suffering servant knows that help is at hand, all current indications to the contrary. The one who vindicates is not far off, even as cries of “guilty!” still ring in the ears. The patience of the servant messenger is rooted and grounded in the soil of living words lived out.

Scripture: Isaiah 50:4-9a (NRSV)

The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens— wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. 5The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. 6I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. 7The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; 8he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. 9It is the Lord Godwho helps me; who will declare me guilty? All of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up.

PENTECOST

PENTECOST

It is said that a certain guide lived in the desert of Arabia who never lost his way. He carried with him a homing pigeon with a very fine cord attached to one of its legs. When in doubt as to which path to take, he flushed the bird into the air. The pigeon quickly strained at the cord to fly in the direction of home and thus led the guide accurately to his destination. Because of this unique practice, he was known as the “dove man.” So, too, the Holy Spirit, the heavenly Dove, is willing and able to direct us in the strait and narrow way that leads us to the more abundant life, if in humble self-denial we submit to his unerring supervision. Then we shall be men and women of  Pentecost. The famous Protestant charismatic preacher, Rev. Moody, once said, “You might as well try to hear without ears or breathe without lungs, as try to live a Christian life without the Spirit of God.”

A little girl was visiting her grandmother in a small country town in southern United States. Grandmother took the girl to a highly charged Pentecostal function. The people got all worked up and expressed their feelings by jumping about and shouting. It was another of those “Holy Roller” services. The little girl asked her grandmother if all that jumping meant that the Holy Spirit was really present. Her grandmother said, “Honey, it doesn’t matter how high they jump; it’s what they do when they come down that will tell you if it is the real thing.” My comment is that it would be good if we were a little more enthusiastic about our faith, but what matters is what we do in everyday life. Does the Holy Spirit have a practical effect on our daily life, and in what way ? As someone put it, “We do not need more of the Spirit. Rather, the Spirit needs more of us.”

Let us focus on our Lord Jesus. When Jesus was baptised in the Jordan and the Spirit descended on him in the visible form of a dove, it wasn’t a piece of advertisement or comic routine, but serious business.  Immediately after the baptism, Jesus submitted to the Spirit who drove him into the desert as a prelude to his mission. The body of Jesus was instinct with the Spirit, such that whenever he exhaled he breathed out the Spirit. You will recall how after his Resurrection he breathed on his disciples saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit; those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven” (John 20,22). That was the Spirit of pardon and reconcilement. After Jesus assigns to the disciples (and to all of us) the ministry of making his love present in the world, he offers the strength to carry out such a difficult task: “He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’ (John 20, 22). This is like a new creation scene in which Jesus enlivens and empowers his followers much as the creator breathed life into the first human being (Gen 2,7). Then Jesus singles out what is clearly the very first duty of his followers: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (20,23). This can only mean that one of the primary effects of true Christian love is the willingness to forgive others who may have hurt us in any way. This is an awesome responsibility and it cannot be restricted  simply to the sacrament of reconciliation. Every one of us is offered the help of the Holy Spirit so that we may have the courage to forgive and if we do not do so, in some very real and tragic sense the healing will be thwarted.

Sometimes I think that the only question that will be asked at the last judgement will be, quite simply, Did you let my people go ? In other words, was the overall effect of your presence in the world to liberate or to hold in bondage ? Were you a Moses, friend of God, or a pharaoh, holding others in slavery ? Forgiveness can be very difficult, but that is precisely why Jesus sends his powerful Spirit to assist us.

Jesus clearly told his disciples, “The Spirit blows where it wills. There’s no telling where it will blow you.” After Pentecost day the apostles were dispersed on the wings of the Spirit to the four corners of the earth on the mission of evangelisation. Jesus told Peter, “When you were young, you clad your belt and went where you pleased. But when you are old (i.e. matured in the Spirit) somebody else will clad you and take you where you do not wish to go.” You might also remember that decisive turning point in the life of Peter. He was in Rome in the year 52, but the antichristian persecution was getting too hot for him there. So he struck out for home and country back in Palestine, accompanied by a little servant boy. But on the way, on the Appian way, to be exact, he was intercepted by Jesus who appeared to him. Peter was shocked to see the Lord and asked him that famous question: “Quo vadis, Domine ?” (“Where are you headed, Lord ?) and suddenly the little boy began speaking, “My brethren in Rome need me.” The vision was over, the Spirit had spoken, and Peter made an about turn, double-timing it back to Rome where he was crucified upside-down.

Living a spiritual life is living a life in which our spirits and Spirit of God bear a joint witness that we belong to God as his beloved children. This witness involves every aspect of our lives: “Whatever you eat, then, or drink, and whatever else you do, do it all for the glory of God”, says St. Paul (Rom 10,31). Wherever we go and whomever we meet, God’s Spirit will manifest himself through us. We may occasionally need to speak up in defence of God, even enlighten someone about Jesus Christ, as long as it doesn’t create divisions. But the way that the Holy Spirit manifests himself most convincingly is through the fruit: “love, joy, peace, endurance, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal 5,22). These fruit speak for themselves. Circle the odd one out. Joy is the odd one out. Why ? The other items, like love, peace, goodness, are virtues requiring strength and application, to have and to develop, especially self-control. But joy seems to come and go by itself. I feel it or I don’t. I feel good when I do and sad when I do not. It’s like the difference between good cool weather and physical fitness. I can’t produce cool weather but I can work towards physical fitness by proper dieting and exercise. “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we diet !” Patience and self control fall into the gymnasium variety; joy is like the weather. We cannot earn it or acquire it, though we can pray for it since we know that God and the saints are in the fullness of joy. And we can prepare ourselves to work together with God’s generosity in the power of the Holy Spirit precisely by making other people happy.

Happiness is the result of spiritual health, not material wealth. Material wealth certainly can be a positive factor of security for our children and ourselves. But by working for our spiritual health we can acquire a deeper foundation for inner security. A happy person is not a person in a given set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes. Story of the woman waking up her son reluctant to go to school. Son pleads, “I hate school; and besides, the boys don’t like me.” Mother reasons, “You’re 40 years old; and besides, you’re the headmaster.” So, you can get out of bed ready to make the day an adventure. Or you can drag yourself out of bed dreading the hours ahead. You can get up early enough to have the time to relax with a healthful breakfast. Or you can stay in bed as long as possible and rush to work, mind and body all tense, and thoughts all scrambled from hurrying. Your attitudes help create your circumstances; they make you either a happy or unhappy person, to overcome problems or go under them.

Among the saints who are identified with joy or mirth is St. Thomas More of England. Erasmus said of him: “From boyhood he was always so pleased with a joke that it might seem that jesting was the main object of his life.” “In adulthood, his countenance answers to his character, having an expression of kind and friendly cheerfulness with a little air of raillery." Thomas More was once asked whether he preferred short women to tall ones. He answered, “short ones; they are the lesser of two evils.” Before you draw your conclusion from the joke about the joker, let me report what his latest biographer, Ackroyd, stresses, that Thomas More regarded women as the intellectual equal of men, and made his daughter Margaret the most learned woman of her day. Thomas More’s wife was Dame Alice. Despite their public teasing, husband and wife were very happy with each other. Thomas More was condemned to death by a perverse and petulant King Henry VIII. But the death sentence did not dampen his gaiety. During his last days, while in prison and suffering from his old disease in the chest - gravel, stone and the cramps  -  he habitually joked with his family and friends, whenever they were permitted to see him, as merrily as in the old days of Chelsea when he was Lord Chancellor. When it came time for him to ascend the executioner’s scaffold, it was discovered that the structure was so weak that it appeared ready to collapse. Turning to the man assisting him, Thomas More remarked, “I pray you, I pray you, Mr. Lieutenant, see me safe up, and as for coming down, let me shift for myself.” After kneeling and saying  prayers, he turned to the executioner and, with a cheerful countenance spoke to him: “Pluck up thy spirits, man, and be not afraid to do thine office. My neck is very short. Take heed, therefore, thou strike not awry for saving thine honour.” As he placed his head on the block, he shifted his prison grown beard aside saying, “This has committed no crime.” May I remind you, dear friends, that under his finery as Lord Chancellor, St. Thomas More always wore a hair shirt and prayed five hours a day.

Focusing on today’s great feast, we recall that our dear Lord Jesus has poured into our hearts the Spirit of the promise. May we be open to his joy, strength and consolation.

We believe in the Holy Spirit who animates the Holy Catholic Church,

who brings about the forgiveness of sins,

and accomplishes the resurrection and life everlasting.

PRAYER: (Hildegaard of Bingen, 1098 – 1179)

Holy Spirit, the life that gives life,

You are the cause of all movement,

You are the breath of all creatures,

You are the salve that purifies all souls,

You are the ointment that heals all wounds,

You are the fire that warms our hearts,

You are the light that guides our feet.

Let the world praise you.