Angelus News | March 22, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 6

LETTER AND SPIRIT
SCOTT HAHN
Scott Hahn is founder of the
St. Paul Center for Biblical
Theology; stpaulcenter.com.
Palms and circumstance
Holy Week begins on a triumphal note. We the disciples
shout our hosannas, and we watch as the world
praises our beloved Messiah. Everyone is at last giving
him — and his followers — the right kind of attention.
This is probably the way most of us would have planned
the culmination of Jesus’ ministry, if we’d been given the
chance.
It is, however, only the beginning of Holy Week; and we
know what’s soon to follow: betrayal, suffering, and death.
Where we would have called for a reprise — a Palm Friday
— God willed something far better. We call it Good Friday,
and it is the only way to the glories of Easter Sunday.
We may recognize a pattern here. I think, for example, of
the Church’s triumphs in the secular sphere. I recall the
triumphal moment when St. Pope John Paul II lay dying.
The world poured out its love. Young people filled the
streets of Rome. All the media trained their cameras on the
Vatican.
I also remember standing with a vast crowd on the White
House lawn to sing “Happy Birthday” to John Paul’s successor.
Our song leader
was the president of the
United States.
Lately, though, the
newscasters and pundits
have been less inclined
to praise the Catholic
Church. And some world
leaders are eager to make
us feel the edge of our
Good Friday, calling us
Neanderthal for refusing
to accept gender ideology
and scoffing at the
Church for defending
the humanity of stored
embryos.
Which is our moment?
When the culture gives
us palms? Or when it
gives us the back of its
hand?
The answer lies in Holy
Week. You and I must
truly give ourselves to the
“The Last Supper,” by Ugolino di Nerio, 1280-1330, Italian. | WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
season this year. We must live it deeply, meditating on the
Word, praying the liturgy with body and soul.
Use Holy Thursday as the key. What, after all, made calvary
a sacrifice? The event did not meet any of the sacrificial
requirements of the Jerusalem Temple. It seemed to be an
ordinary execution.
But it was indeed a sacrifice. All Christians agree on that
point.
At the Last Supper Jesus gave his body to be broken, his
blood to be poured out, as if on an altar. The Eucharist is
ordered to the cross. But the Eucharist is also ordered to the
Resurrection — a glory we could not have experienced if
we had lingered forever in Palm Sunday.
It’s the resurrected humanity of Jesus that we consume in
our holy Communion, in the Eucharist. We come to it by
way of triumphs, but they are fleeting. We come to it by
way of pain, but that, too, will pass. We receive the Host as
a pledge of lasting glory, and we have the grace to endure
the rest. Here we have no lasting city. But we have hope,
because we know Holy Week.
32 • ANGELUS • March 22, 2024