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Dear brothers and Sisters in Christ,
We begin today’s liturgy with Jesus entering Jerusalem and being hailed as the King of the Jews. The people saw Jesus as the One who would save them from their oppressors. What they did not realize was that the way Jesus chose to save His people was not the way they expected. They expected a kingdom here on earth. Jesus showed them that the way to freedom required an emptying of self to the point of death on a cross. Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Phil 2:6-8) We begin Holy week each year with this contrast between our way of seeing things and God’s way of seeing things. We tend to come up with human solutions to our problems. We take pride in our own wisdom and propose our own ideas. Jesus shows us that God’s wisdom is so much different than our wisdom. God sees the big picture. He has a plan that is so much bigger than what we can even begin to imagine. He knew that the only way to defeat sin and death was to send His only begotten Son into the world to suffer death on a cross. Jesus had to empty Himself and take upon Himself the sins of the whole world so that all who choose to believe in Him could have eternal life in Him. This week is about following in the footsteps of Jesus. We accompany Him into Jerusalem as he is cheered on by crowds of disciples hailing Him as King of the Jews. We accompany Him into the upper room as he shares the Last Supper with His apostles and disciples. In Luke 22, Jesus “took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me.’ And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which will be shed for you.’” We then accompany Jesus into the garden where He is betrayed by Judas. We experience His pain as He is scourged, crowned with a crown of thorns, ridiculed, spat upon by the soldiers, condemned to death, and given His cross to carry. Jesus freely accepted this way of the cross because He knew it would lead to our freedom from the bondage of sin and death. To follow Jesus as His disciples means to embrace our own cross. It means bringing our burdens and suffering to Jesus to be united with His own cross. It means humbly surrendering our sins to Jesus in the Sacraments so that He can set us free and give us a share in His resurrection. Brothers and sisters, it is my prayer that each of us will set aside all the unnecessary activities in our lives this week and spend as much time as we can being united with Jesus’ way of the cross so that we can experience the fullness of His resurrection. Thank you Jesus for Your way of the cross, and thank You for calling us, like Peter and the Apostles, to follow you.