The Saturday evening before Palm Sunday, I looked through my television OnDemand offerings for something that might help me unwind a bit and put me in a frame of mind for Holy Week. Among the offerings, none of which seemed to fit the bill, was Richard Jewell, the movie about the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing hero, somewhat of a “nobody” in the eyes of those who casually knew him, who was wrongly accused, truly scapegoated and had his and his mother’s lives deeply scarred for the rest of their days.  I passed on it and the other OnDemand offerings and spent the next few hours semi-watching some on-air TV shows. The next morning while listening to Bishop Robert Barron’s Palm Sunday homily, I found myself thinking, “Maybe I need to watch Richard Jewell.”  As I listened to Bishop Barron speaking about what Jesus experienced in those days before his Crucifixion, what the Lamb of God led to slaughter endured when He was placed into the hands of people in Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago, it sounded not unlike what I thought Richard Jewell might have endured.  Could it be that what was done to Jesus continues to be done to people today?  To whom?  By whom?  By those among us, myself included? How? Probably not intentionally. What could make that happen?  Perhaps habits of our hearts that lead us to make poor choices.  Habits like judging people solely from my faulty knowledge of the person. Habits that lead me to take too much pride in executing whatever authority I am able to grab and that ends up spinning my local, and not so local, society into unintended convulsions.  So it seemed to me that God, through Bishop Barron, might be directing me and, perhaps through me, you who are reading this, to spend some time during this very different Holy  Week to review and change what can be changed in us to lessen things like the scapegoating and crucifixions that are happening today.

To those of you who were part of our last Explorations in Faith and Spirituality sessions, I hope that your reading this post and listening to Bishop Barron’s homily will be one of those Flannery O’Connor graced moments, when you see something about yourself in such a way that it leads you through the darkness within and around you to the Light of truth that is the only thing that really matters.

It was Bishop Barron who turned our attention to O’Connor’s idea of grace being something that knocks us off of the spiritual pedestals we place ourselves on.  O’Connor says we refuse the offered graces more often than we accept them.  I pray for myself and for each of you, that this Holy Week will be a time for us to see ourselves as God sees each of us – as a flawed versions of what we can be, that we accept the graces that shed light on what we hide from ourselves, that we are not as good or as God-centered as we could be, that there are things about me and you that are not quite right. With God’s grace, may Easter bring us through death and darkness into Resurrection and new life.

Below is Bishop Barron’s Palm Sunday Homily, split into three parts with some points to ponder.  And if you feel inclined, share your comments in the comment section.

Sister Loretta

BISHOP ROBERT BARRON’S PALM SUNDAY HOMILY

PART 1.  THE DIAMOND IN THE MUCK

Think about it: 

• that downward trajectory of the Incarnation:
  • “Though he was in the form of God, Jesus lowered himself to share our humanity.”
  • “He went all the way down, sharing our death, and even, this terrible, torturous death of the cross.”

Think about God being so “moved” with compassion for us – moved to become one of those “diamond” – be shoulder to shoulder with those “muddied diamonds.”  (Note those two words used by St. Anselm to describe us humans:  muddied and diamond.) He – creator; we – created.  Would you be willing to become one of some “thing” that you make?  . . . with a cake or a chair that you made?  Why do you think God did that?  (Don’t try to remember what you think you were taught.  What do YOU think? What thoughts about this are coming into your head?

PART 2.  THE PASSION , DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS

In the next part of Bishop Barron’s homily, he speaks about how in St. Matthew’s Gospel account we see that Jesus was subjected to just about every “permutation and combination of human sin” and it is this section that made me realize that, as we have often said to each other in our Bible Study sessions, we, humans, haven’t made much progress in changing our propensity for muddying up ourselves and each other with those bad habits of “human sin.”  It was during Barron’s going through this list that I realized that I could use a movie-long reflection on my own “permutations and combinations of human sin.”

Barron’s places before us some of the sufferings endured by  Jesus in His Passion and death.  These are sufferings still endured by Him through our “human sins” of omission or commission toward those among us today.  As you listen to the next part of the bishop’s homily, consider whether you are inflicting unnecessary suffering.

Betrayal of a friend – -Judas
Friends are sound asleep when he is going through a really rough time
Violence – Temple Guard approaches Him as He is praying to the Father
Abandoned by His Disciples
Spiritual cowardice of His apostles
False testimony against Him
Peter denies knowing Him
Scapegoated by the Pharisees and the crowd
Judas, who ate with Him, commits suicide rather than knowing He would forgive him
Indifference to the truth – Pilate
Mocked by people as He is dying

Think about it:

Write down the one or more “human sins” that you wish were not in your thoughts and behaviors.

My betrayal of a friend
My being a person “asleep” or not noticing when someone is going through a really rough time
Violence – approaching violently someone who may not be guilty of whatever I  think he/she did
My abandoning someone in a time of need
My spiritual cowardice  – not saying or doing what needs to be said or done
My false testimony
My denying knowing someone who is “on the outs” with my ‘in” crowd
My scapegoating
My being like Judas  – committing spiritual suicide rather than knowing Jesus will forgive me
My indifferent to the truth when it serves my purposes
My mocking people while they are down-and-out or suffering

PART 3.  I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD

In the conclusion of his homily, Bishop Barron continues to speak of the darkness of sin and Jesus, the Light, “inserts himself right into the heart of it, amidst all of it, going to the bottom of all of it”, going from standing “shoulder to shoulder with sinners in the muddy waters of the Jordan” at his Baptism, inserting Himself there to signal the purpose of His public ministry through to its climax – as “all of the cacophony of sin swirls around him. Jesus inserted himself right there. Now, why? That he might explode evil from within. . . .

“What’s Easter, that we anticipate now a week hence? The explosion of the light from inside the darkness that definitively breaks its power.”

Think of the muddiness and the darkness that we are experiencing right now.  Think of our baptism, our promise to follow Christ – as individual diamonds and as facets of the one God-created diamond of humanity skillfully cut and polished by our personal passions, deaths and resurrections.

Will we and the people around us see the explosions of light from within us, as we allow the graces of Jesus’ Resurrection to release us from that which is keeping us from growing into the fullness of what God has created us to be?