Passion Sunday
The Jews
therefore said: "Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and
the prophets: and thou sayest: If any man keep my word, he shall not taste
death for ever. Art thou greater than our father Abraham who is dead? And the
prophets are dead. Whom dost thou make thyself?"
Jesus
answered: "If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father that
glorifieth me, of whom you say that he is your God. And you have not known him:
but I know him. And if I shall say that I know him not, I shall be like to you,
a liar. But I do know him and do keep his word. Abraham your father rejoiced
that he might see my day: he saw it and was glad." The Jews therefore said
to him: "Thou art not yet fifty years old. And hast thou seen
Abraham?" Jesus said to them:"Amen, amen, I say to you, before
Abraham was made, I AM." They took up stones therefore to cast at him. But
Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. (John 8:52-59)
Everything
around us urges us to mourn. The images of the Saints, the very crucifix on our
Altar, are veiled from our sight. The Church is oppressed with grief. During
the first four weeks of Lent, she compassionated her Jesus fasting in the
desert; his coming Sufferings and Crucifixion and Death are what now fill her
with anguish. We read in today’s Gospel, that the Jews threaten to stone the
Son of God as a blasphemer: but his hour is not yet come. He is obliged to flee
and hide himself. It is to express this deep humiliation, that the Church veils
the Cross.
A God hiding Himself, that he may evade the anger of men, what a
mystery! Is it weakness? Is it, that he fears death? No, we shall soon see Him
going out to meet His enemies: but, at present, He hides Himself from them,
because all that had been prophesied regarding Him has not been fulfilled.
Besides, His death is not to be by stoning; He is to die upon a Cross, the tree
of malediction, which, from that time forward, is to be the Tree of Life. Let
us humble ourselves, as we see the Creator of heaven and earth thus obliged to
hide Himself from men, who are bent on His destruction!
Let us go back, in
thought, to the sad day of the first sin, when Adam and Eve hid themselves
because a guilty conscience told them they were naked. Jesus is come to assure
us of our being pardoned! and lo! He hides Himself, not because He is naked, He
that is to the Saints the garb of holiness and immortality, but because He made
Himself weak, that He might make us strong. Our First Parents sought to hide
themselves from the sight of God; Jesus hides himself from the eye of men; but
it will not be thus for ever. The day will come, when sinners, from whose anger
He now flees, will pray to the mountains that they fall on them to shield them
from His gaze; but their prayer will not be granted, and they shall see the Son
of man coming in the clouds of heaven, with much power and majesty (St. Matth.
xxiv. 30).
This Sunday
is called Passion Sunday, because the Church begins, on this day, to make the
Sufferings of our Redeemer her chief thought. It is called also, Judica, from
the first word of the Introit of the Mass; and again, Neomania, that is, the
Sunday of the new (or, the Easter) moon, because it always falls after the new
moon which regulates the Feast of Easter Day. ~ Dom Gueranger, Liturgical Year
for Passion Sunday
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