Our People

Passion Sunday (Palm Sunday) 2008

Our Lady Star of the Sea Church, Watson’s Bay

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
16/3/2008

We have just begun the holiest week of the year, when the Church will celebrate her most solemn liturgies in recollection of the greatest events in salvation history. One big feature of this week of celebrations will be processions. We have just had a solemn entrance procession, re-enacting Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. On Holy Thursday morning there will be a procession of Holy Oils into Cathedral for consecration for our use in the year ahead. On Holy Thursday night we will take the Blessed Sacrament in procession out of this church and into the darkness of Christ’s last night. On Good Friday we will come forward in procession to the cross. On all these days we will come in procession to receive the Holy Eucharist. And our most dramatic procession of all will be that on Saturday night, when we bring our new Paschal candle just lit from Easter fire into church, assisted by the whole community of light and song.

Now, that seems to be a lot of walking about. Why all this to and fro, this standing, kneeling and sitting? Do we have spiritual ants in our pants? Are we unable to keep still, even for a few moments? Well, one thing it clearly is not about is just getting from A to B: if I wanted to get from the sacristy to the sanctuary there is a much quicker and easier route!

Processions are, of course, an element in most ceremonial, not just of every religion, but also of many secular occasions such as the Opening of Parliament or the conferral of academic degrees. Catholic culture from early times included many marches – for funerals, big feasts, the Blessed Sacrament, local saints – decorated with smells and bells, banners and books, song and dance, relics and rose petals. In England, on Rogation Days, they used to mark out the parish limits by walking all around those borders, reading the Gospel, singing, beating out the boundaries with sticks, and flogging the boys so they would always remember where the parish boundaries were. Happily for our altar servers we don’t do that here in Watson’s Bay, but even here, every Sunday we try to have an entrance procession with the processional cross and (if there are enough servers) with candles too.

There are two thing we might reflect upon every time we process into church or to communion: first, that these processions are symbols of God’s great procession to us. From the dawn of creation to the end of time, God has come to us time and again. Most dramatically he comes in Jesus Christ. In our Second Reading today (Phil 2:6-11) St Paul sings his great hymn about God emptying himself of glory to take on our life, to become our servant, to suffer with us all we suffer, even to die with us and for us. And having descended from the heights into the depths of human tragedy, he emerges victorious and is raised up again to the heights, refilled with his divine glory.

The procession of God to humanity is like an entrance procession, as God returns time and again, week after week, with his offer of salvation, of insight, healing, liberation, hope. Today we hear of climax of that great procession of God to us, as Jesus makes his way to his Passover in Jerusalem, from his Last Supper out to Garden of Gethsemane, through his arrest and trials and tortures, along the Way of the Cross to Golgotha and the Tomb, that he might share with all of broken humanity their suffering and cares and promise them new life.

God comes to us, then, in a sort of liturgical procession. But secondly, we come to him. As we process into Mass or up to Holy Communion or this week to the Good Friday cross or, at the climax of our year, with the Light of Easter, we rehearse the procession of our own lives to God. This week past one of us, John Joseph Inglis, completed that journey. This courteous, honest, humble man had been in our area since 1920 and in his Fitzwilliam Road home since 1927. For nearly a century he had come regularly, often daily, to this church and this altar (and the altar before it). By the time I came here as Parish Priest he was a mere 92 and less steady on his feet, and so God came to him by way of Holy Communion in his home. John was a living repository of the history of our parish, as he moved into his house in the very year we became a separate parish with our own territory and parish priest. He saw its development, alongside that of our suburb and city and country and world: he was not of the view that we had made much progress in our procession to God during those years!

In our first Gospel today (Mt 21:1-11) people accompanied Jesus on his solemn entry into Jerusalem, waving palms and throwing cloaks and branches in his path. In our solemn recitation of the Passion (Mt 26:14-27:66) we saw his disciples make their convoy from the Last Supper out to the Garden and some even to the trial and death and burial. They are each of us, on our journey to heaven, or as the religion texts were called when I was in primary school, My Way to God. On that expedition many twists and turns possible. We may well shoot off to the right or the left, rather than following the cross to the altar of heaven. We may well fall on our backsides rather than our knees.

John Inglis died on his knees: kneeling beside his bed, saying his evening prayers, as he did every morning and every evening of his life. Apart from martyrdom, it is hard to think of a more beautiful way a Christian could die. And so he completed his procession, his Way to God. This week of processions invites each to look at ourselves and ask, in the procession of my life from birth to grave and beyond: am I making progress? Not just in my career or family building or super fund: am I making progress in my heart and soul, making my way to God?