An Ecumenical Ministry in the Parish of St Patrick's Catholic Church In San Diego USA

米国サンディエゴの聖パトリックカトリック教会教区におけるエキュメニカル宣教

Thursday, March 21, 2024

LET'S ENTER THE CITY

LET'S ENTER THE CITY,

THE TIME FOR OUR SALVATION HAS ALREADY COME.

Lent is coming to an end. We have walked a long stretch of the desert, but we have not yet reached where we need to go. Soon we will celebrate the divine mysteries that have given us life in Christ. Today is Palm Sunday and Holy Week has begun. Today, Sunday, before starting our celebrations we made a small procession, carrying some palms in our hands and we sang: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”, like on that day when Jesus himself, riding a donkey, decided to enter the holy city of Jerusalem to face what awaits him. It is not the first time that Jesus enters that great city, he has already done so many times, especially during the holidays. Precisely at that moment, the city is once again filled with visitors, as the Jewish Passover festival is already beginning.

Today's gospel reading (Mark 15: 1-39) partially tells us the story of all those things that will happen to Jesus when he enters the city in a few days. In this way we are also preparing to enter the city and live every day and every moment those events that will leave us a legacy by which we have all been given new life in Christ. Starting from the Last Supper on Thursday night, we will then go to the Garden of Gethsemane to accompany Jesus with our prayers, and we will witness how he is brought before the Sanhedrin who will judge him and take him before the great ones to finally be condemned and taken away to the Cross, then buried, and we will wait for his glorious Resurrection: all this, just as we confess it every Sunday when professing our faith with the Creed.

As on other occasions, as if it were a journey through time, I invite you to enter the city, to that walled city of Jerusalem, to take our places, to be the protagonists of the mysteries of our salvation, to closely accompany to Jesus, and to have a strong and tender heart at the same time, to look with the eyes of faith and to maintain hope in the will of God, even if the pain seems to win. It is time, it is the time of our salvation.

Fr. Carlos Flores, OSA

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