Text: Fr Dominic Robinson SJ on Palm Sunday at Farm Street

Image: Jesuits online

Parish Priest Fr Dominic Robinson delivered this homily at the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street, Mayfair on Palm Sunday:

Hosanna… the Messiah has arrived to save us, but come Wednesday the fear, doubt, betrayal… condemnation… death on a cross… we turn on our saviour and crucify him.

Where are we in this crowd?

Maybe take that away with us this weekend - what is my reaction as the baying crowd hails the King's entry into the city and then turns on him?

Where am I in any crowd?

I find myself asking that question often and regularly. In a world where we're expected to believe that some things cannot change, where the injustice of abject poverty amid outrageous wealth is just taken as an economic necessity, where I sit on my hands at the suggestion I can do something to save our planet from disaster, when I shrug my shoulders and say I've done all I can to write to my MP to plead for more time and discernment on assisted suicide, when I say I don't understand the conflict in the Middle East and leave it to the experts, when I say let's continue to pray for vocations to ministry and they will come, when I say the Churches are really united in a diversity that's actually good, when I say the abuse crisis in the Church has nothing to do with me.

Being in the crowd means responsibility. The crowd lulls us into a herd mentality to go with whatever the person next to me is saying or thinking. And Christ ends up crucified because good people were complicit in bad deeds.

The Church, that is all of us wanting to walk together as pilgrims towards the heavenly city again in this Jubilee Year, embarks on this painful journey again, accompanying each other, striving yet again to listen better to the signs of our times, to discern the way forward. At our heart are the poorest, the weakest, those without a voice, loved especially by the God who embraces death all the way to the tomb.

Hosanna to this Messiah is our anthem this morning. Only the passage of time will lead us to what that Hosanna really means.

LINK

Farm Street Church: www.farmstreet.org.uk/