ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

Passion Sunday

Fr Ivan Aquilina

We enter today a fresh sacred space that we call Passiontide. For the last four and a half weeks we have been in the desert facing ourselves and our own demons. We have learnt the usefulness of self-discipline and see the value of it so much that we will not put it to one side after Easter. This fresh space of Passiontide now summons us to turn our look from discipline and the rule of our life to the Cross and the Crucified one. This week, the prelude of the most holy of weeks we are to sit at the foot and in the shadow of the life giving cross in which we conquer. The cross is our covenant.

The last weeks were, in a sense, building up for this day.

In the First Sunday of Lent we were presented with the covenant God made with Noah, the covenant of the rainbow, when God promised that he would never give up on His people and that His people should not give up on themselves.

The Second Sunday of Lent presented us with the covenant made with Abraham, the covenant of faith. God was present during Abraham's turmoil when his faith was challenged, just as God is present in our lives when death, sickness, or distress challenges our faith.

The Third Sunday presented the covenant made with Moses, the Ten Commandments. The covenant of Sinai was a call to holiness, a call to be separate from a world that looks towards satisfying itself instead of living for God and for others.

The Fourth Sunday presented the covenant of the desert, and the sign of this covenant was the bronze serpent on the pole. Those who look at the serpent will find healing. God protects His people who find Him in the most unusual places.

Today we are presented with the new covenant of Jeremiah's prophecy, it will not be written on tablets; it will be written in the hearts of the people. The people will not need the tablets of Sinai carried about in the Ark to remind them of the presence of God and to tell them how to serve God. No, the New Covenant will be an interior covenant. God's word would not just be alive in scripture. God's word would dwell within each person.

The New Covenant, the presence of God written in our hearts, is the Covenant of Jesus Christ. Its sign and symbol is the cross with Jesus nailed to it. It is the covenant of the Blood of Christ lifted on the cross: I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.

The cross is the life giving covenant; Jesus climbed it as his throne of love. There in between heaven and earth, Christ Jesus reconciled once and for all humanity to God.

Was the cross really necessary? What kind of God do we worship if this is a God that to forgive us demands such brutality on His only begotten Son? These arguments would be true if Jesus had no choice at all. Jesus had a choice. What he needed to do was to tone down his language, to keep away from Jerusalem, to linger in the upper room during the last supper, to take another turning and avoid the garden of Gethsemane, to hide among the trees of that garden. There were so many temptations in front of Jesus, simple things to do, nothing sinful, just a different turning here or a different word there: it was just so easy and so tempting to run away from the cross. Jesus had a choice. He had a choice between compromise and cross. Jesus could alter all the things he said and go for a comfortable life somewhere; he seemed intelligent enough even to join the leaders of the people, be one of them rather than against them. Jesus could just go with the flow. However, Jesus knew that compromise would loose his integrity. He was to bear witness for truth and no lie could ever darken his lips. He was free and wanted to secure freedom. To keep his integrity, his freedom intact the only way forward was the way of the cross. The Father would see this absolute sacrifice given freely and lovingly and therefore he would accept it as redemption for all humanity. No wonder the curtain of the Sanctuary was rent asunder as Jesus died. That which in the temple was wishful thinking in Jesus became real.

Like Jesus we also are faced with choices. We can always compromise a bit here and there; go with the flow, nothing sinful. We have a choice between compromise and cross. Between loosing life in clutching hold of all the superfluous or in hating the superfluous to choose the freedom of life. We have a choice between the social pressures made upon us as Church to conform to today’s values, which will be tomorrow’s disregarded fashion or to hold to the values of the Faith Catholic and stand as prophets to this soulless and unhappy generation. We have a choice between freedom and slavery of sin.

Let us make our choices at the shadow and space of the Holy Cross. Under the Cross and by living the cross we find peace, freedom and unity. A year ago today the Servant of God Pope John Paul II returned to his father’s house. One of the last testimonies to us was that photograph taken on Good Friday; it showed him from the back, sitting in his chapel, clutching the crucifix. May it be an image that inspires us, may we clutch the cross that brings freedom, healing and unity.

The Cross is a book, it has been read and studied for the last 2000 years but it is still fresh and we are still in the first few pages. Looking at the crucifix we learn about the real meaning of suffering, of sacrifice, of peace, of joy, of freedom, of life and above all the true meaning of Love.

The secret of a good life: It is a life with the Crucified Jesus at the centre of it. This is our covenant. Amen.