Hosanna!

For some reason, I think I profited from a rather quiet celebration of Palm Sunday. What stands out for me is the particular poignancy of the Hosanna to the Son of David by the children of the Hebrews. The reading of the Passion from the Gospel of St. Mark only further accentuated this feeling for me. Can I trace its origin back to the scene of the anointing in Bethany? Or was it the exchange on the Mount of Olives, about how striking the shepherd would shake the faith of the sheep and cause them all to disperse? Perhaps, more than circumstance, the grace of the moment was the fruit of something cumulative but yet not planned or engineered on my part, yes, truly a prompting, a gift.

I think the poignancy is sort of that: resulting from the sense of a type of interior tug of war, almost a vacillation, a pulling back and forth of my heart between attachment to Christ, the Beloved, smitten for our offences, and flight before the dread of having to share fully in this His cup, which will not pass. The children's Hosanna is neither ignorant nor distorted, but reflects the allegiance we all owe to Mary's Child, bruised, derided, cursed, defiled. Of course, the solitude of the Passion belongs to Jesus alone. Even so, we are to watch and pray, not to have our rest, but indeed to accompany Him beyond the hosannas.

My Holy Week prayer for one and all would be for the grace to watch and pray with Jesus, to draw the tug-of-war just that much closer to a definitive win for attachment to the Son of David. Hosanna!