At the Mass for Palm Sunday, Bishop Michael invited the People of God of the Dioceses of Clonfert, Galway, Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora to accompany Jesus in his Holy Week journey.
“Holy week after Holy week, in the telling and re-telling of the story, we are caught up in the presence of a God who stands with us in our human suffering – the presence of a God who is with us even in our human death.” – Bishop Michael
With the traditional blessing of palm branches and the reading of what, for many, here in Ireland is simply known as “the long Gospel” – we have begun the most solemn and sacred week of the year. The next seven days of 2026, offer us a unique opportunity to retell and relive the events of that first Holy Week many years ago.
Today we have stood, among the crowds, on the streets of Jerusalem with branches in our hands to welcome with great fanfare the miracle worker from Galilee. How fickle people are! In no time, those same crowds are baying for his blood. In the coming days, we will accompany Jesus in the last moments of his earthly life. We will see him visit his dear friends, Mary and Martha and Lazarus at Bethany. There Mary will anoint his feet with costly ointment as if preparing his body for what it was to undergo. We will see, one of his closest disciples, Judas plot and plan his betrayal and hear how Jesus began to sense that “all was not right”.
On Thursday, we will sit at table and wonder why he, the master, would wash the disciples’ feet. We will try to figure out what he meant by “eat his body” and “drink his blood”. Later in the garden, we will witness him in terrible turmoil, racked with fear at the prospect of what was to lie ahead. There will be that great contradiction of being betrayed with a kiss – the taking as a criminal, the blows and taunts and the painful humiliation of it all.
We will stand in that square and watch Pilate declare “Ecce Homo” –“behold the Man” and condemn the Lord of love to a criminal’s death. We will walk with him as he shudders and stumbles under the weight of the cross to Calvary. There we will watch and wait until he breathes his last and bows his head in death.
Others will come and take his broken body down. We will stand at a distance as his mother holds and caresses her lifeless son and follow, far back, as they lay him to the tomb. On Holy Saturday night, we will keep awake as one keeps wake with a grieving family. On Sunday morning, at the first sign of dawn, we will go with the women to the tomb. We will stand once again at a distance. We will hear the commotion and consternation – for the tomb is empty. Once again, that message that has rung out each and every Easter Sunday since, will resound –“He is not here! He is risen.”
Holy week after Holy week, in the telling and re-telling of the story, we are caught up in the presence of a God who stands with us in our human suffering – the presence of a God who is with us even in our human death. This is the core message of the week ahead – of Holy Week. Please God each of us will carve out some time in our busy lives to contemplate it, to be consoled by it and to be renewed in our Christian belief that no matter what the light of God will conquer all and every darkness of this dark world of ours. Amen