Palm Sunday

For many years now, Palm Sunday has been designated World Youth Day. So I am pleased to welcome to this Palm Sunday Mass the young people of the Diocese of Paisley.

My dear brothers and sisters, my dear young people, together we have heard the account of the passion and death of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ according to Luke. The Passion follows the way of the cross of Jesus in a narrative which is not short of detail. Through that detail, the evangelist in fact makes us almost onlookers and spectators of this unfolding tragedy. And as we look on, we see betrayal, denial, and mendacity; we see inhumanity, torture and cruelty; and we see pain, suffering and death. We look on with horror at the range of extreme suffering, psychological and physical, to which this patently good man, Jesus of Nazareth, is exposed. We wonder how it could happen. We ask where God is in all of this.

But just as Jesus cries out in his battered humanity, My God, my God, why have you abandoned me”, here we encounter the very mystery of the Passion. For the Passion is above all a story about love and about redemption. The Passion reminds us that Jesus bore his sufferings with patience and forbearance, and died on the cross to save us from our sins. Every year I wrestle with this mystery. How can the good actions of one man save me, a distinct and different individual? And every year, I realise anew that through the goodness, obedience, innocence, self-giving of Jesus, what the Gospel calls a new covenant, a new relationship with God is established. Because of Jesus, God looks on humanity in a new way; a way which invites us to friendship not to enmity, to virtue not to sin, to grace not to judgement, to life not to death. That is why we call Jesus the Saviour. That is why we believe in him. That is why we love him. That is why we call out to him in prayer. That is why we follow him. He, and he alone, knows for sure the way to true humanity and to true life.

So, my dear young people, just as we carried our palms in procession today in imitation of how the children of Israel welcomed Jesus into the holy city of Jerusalem, so we are invited to welcome him now into our lives and to follow him wherever he may lead us. As we follow Jesus, carrying our cross of Christian life and witness, Jesus assures us that his yoke is easy and his burden is light, for the way of the cross leads not just to death on Calvary’s hill but to the new life of the resurrection. I can promise you that through laughter and tears, through suffering and joy, you will not regret following Jesus who leads us towards life in its fullness, now and in the world to come.

 St. Mirin’s Cathedral

1^st April 2007