Offered by Father Matthew Dallman, Obl.S.B., for the Parish of Tazewell County on Palm Sunday, 2018.
We have asked in our Collect the help of our loving Lord that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts whereby He has given us life and immortality. And we do in fact have a need this help. We are asking for something more than merely hearing. To hear is to process something conveyed audibly as information. But we already know the information of today. Jesus entered Jerusalem at the Passover with great fanfare, and during the week instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper, and he was betrayed and by the end of the week, he was dead. That is the bare information of the last week of the life of Jesus, yet Holy Week is the time to go beyond the information, beyond the bare account, beyond the story we all know well—beyond into a contemplation of these mighty acts. To contemplate is to behold, to observe in depth. To contemplate is to make our hearts an open place of witness and of watching. After the Maundy Thursday Mass, everyone is invited to watch at the Altar of Repose with Jesus as He is in the Garden of Gethsemane—watching, observing, beholding in depth: contemplating the mighty act of love that is Jesus and what He has given us in the Eucharist. In that moment and in all moments during Holy Week, we are invited to contemplate joy that comes from pain; glory that comes from crucifixion; resurrection that comes from death.