Passover Processions

Fr Richard Healey reflects on the Jewish feast of Passover and its profound significance, especially as we approach Holy Week. He contrasts the Roman display of power during Passover with Jesus’ humble entry into Jerusalem through the eastern gate. Jesus, accompanied by the marginalized, embodies peace and solidarity, not violence. Fr Richard encourages us to embrace this sacred time, seeking salvation and freedom from hatred. He invites us to reflect on Christ’s humility and love, urging us to open our hearts to His transformative message as we journey through Holy Week together.

00:00:00 The Jewish feast of Passover was one of the high points of the calendar. Each year it commemorated that glorious moment when the Lord finally heard they cry, when he saw their suffering. When he acted with mighty hand and outstretched arm to bring them liberation from the slavery that they had felt in Egypt into the freedom of the wilderness, and then eventually of the Promised Land. And so every year, when they gathered together to celebrate this festival. The tensions that were always palpable between the Jewish people and the Roman authorities became even more heightened. There was much more stress. The the sense of the the soldiers being so hyper aware of that feast and the memory of that feast for the people. And so we believe that at this time, The Romans wanted to establish themselves and their authority, and so they would hold this great procession into the city of Jerusalem, coming in through the western gates, with all of the soldiers armed fully, all of their armor fully engaged as so strength of solidarity with the might of Rome, just to remind the people that they were the boss.

00:01:33 They were the ones who were in control, who had ultimate authority. So when Jesus comes in not from the western gate, not from the gate facing the Mediterranean, but from the eastern gate, the desert gate, the gate that comes in from the Mount of Olives. He comes not with a show of strength and might and military power, but he comes simply surrounded by the peasants, by the nobodies. They didn’t have any armor to bear. They didn’t have any swords to yield. All they had was the clothing that was spare. All that they had were the branches that they’d cut down from the trees around them to lay down. There weren’t any battle cries. There were no shouts of declaration. All that they sang was Hosanna! Save us, save us, Lord, save us from all of the oppression that we face, all of the oppression that we experience. So as we come into this Holy Week, as we remember these events and as we are thrown then into the deep end of Holy Thursday night and Good Friday with the reading of the passion, we experienced just the profound sense of awe and wonder at the brutality that Jesus, the Prince of Peace, coming with no military might, coming, not to overthrow the Romans, but coming as this bearer of the witness of the power of solidarity, the power of humanity as we gather in peaceful procession.

00:03:13 The power of what happens when we realize that we can do nothing but he can. And so we continue to make Hosanna our cry. We continue to bring that expression of our need for God to do that while healing work within us still. And so as we move into this sacred time, let’s allow the Lord to indeed be the one who meets us. As we cry out our hosannas, let’s allow the Lord to bring us into salvation, to free us, to set us free from all those desires, to use violence and hatred and military brutality to affect. But let’s be people that cry out with the words of Paul in our second reading today, that though he was in the very nature of God, he humbled himself and submitted himself to death, dying on the cross out of love for us. So let’s pray that we might experience and encounter that love more deeply over the days of this week.