This Sunday is Palm Sunday. Many churches will have their children process in waving palms. I have never been at ease with that tradition because Jesus' journey into Jerusalem was a treacherous one. Yet, I will be in church on Sunday, and perhaps this year I will come away with a new insight. For now, I am grateful Lent continues for a while longer. Lent is like a secret that we hold dear: that life seems just a little more fragile, a little more precious. It gives us courage to continue our journeys that at times can be joyous, and at other times perilous. Lent helps us to remember that no matter what, we are more than what we are going through. Certainly that is one of the lessons of Palm Sunday: the one celebrated will be the one reviled, but both conditions pale to the ultimate reality that the sacred will always rise up and be made known.
Peace on your journey. Please know you go with God.
"Yet, Lent for me feels in some way a refreshing break from religiosity, a reduction in the dosage. The emphasis is on the desert rather than the church, silence rather than words, stillness rather than ritual. The monk’s life, as I quoted from St Benedict some weeks ago, is a perpetual Lent. I take it in this sense, not only walking the tightrope of moderation but not allowing religion to get out of proportion. For example, Benedict (who was not a priest) said that the work-tools of the monastery should be treated with the same reverence as the vessels of the altar. Religion should not be sequestrated, isolated from ordinary life. The sacred and the profane must merge in a religion centered on the Incarnation and the humanity of God."
Father Laurence Freeman
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