Reflection for Palm Sunday: Communion Amid Chaos, April 3, 2020
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Palm Sunday 2020
Parish of the Holy Cross—St. John the Baptist
Midtown Manhattan
Communion amid chaos“Where did everyone go…. It’s like a ghost town!”
As is true for our fellow human beings around the globe, April 5th, 2020 – Passion Sunday – finds Catholics experiencing disorientation and loss, anxiety and grief. Faced with a virulent pandemic that places us all at grave risk and, in fact, makes each of us a potential threat to others, our every pattern of daily life is interrupted, distorted and altered – perhaps for the length of our lives.
For disciples of Jesus Christ who prize participation in the Sunday Assembly – where the paschal mystery revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is remembered, celebrated and ratified – this time of sheltering and physical distancing is especially dismaying. A bewildering time bereft of the gift of gathering by the grace of our G-D in liturgical engagement with the mystery of redemption – the gracious offer of mercy and love extended us in the life and mission of Jesus of Nazareth.
On this Passion Sunday, we are shorn of the shared raising of palms we have come to treasure as a means of greeting and relishing the extravagant grace poured out in Christ Jesus. Likewise, we find ourselves devoid of the age-old communal processions that remind us of the profound journey to which we have been invited. Yet, we are not deprived of the passion and presence of the One who alone is our hope and salvation. While we may experience significant isolation, we are not alone.
The acute lack of social encounter and accompaniment men and women around the world currently endure is uniquely magnified for those of us who gather around the gospel in the parish of Holy Cross—St. John the Baptist in midtown Manhattan:
Aren’t we located at the Crossroads of the World with its heart in Times Square?
Don’t we receive the teeming commuters and visitors who pour through the cramped corridors of Penn Station every day?
Where did everyone go … it’s like a ghost town!
Currently, our locale bears more than a hint of the eerie: ominous emergency vehicle sirens amplify in the canyons of empty midtown avenues and streets; the cries of the haunted echo more achingly, more longingly amid the sullen quiet that has settled upon us; stray pedestrians shuffling by at a wary distance, face shrouded by cloth, feet engaged in a shuffle at turns edgy and aimless.
Most stark in its absence? The crowds that constitute our usual reality here in bustling New York City. Crowds: sometimes arousing in us an energy and joy, other times annoyance and resentment, at all times a sense of both promise and peril.
The passion account in the Gospel of Matthew calls our attention to the crowds that gathered in Jerusalem around Jesus of Nazareth. Upon his entry into the city, the crowd raised palms in homage to him, singing “hosanna in the highest,” welcoming a treasured guest as their hero and liberator. Lightning fast though, he would run afoul of the temple authorities, be denied and betrayed by his closest companions, arrested in the stealth of night, hurriedly tried in court, expediently sentenced to the cruel death of crucifixion. The crowds then fell prey to a very different voice, the menacing cry of recrimination and rejection: “crucify him! crucify him!” Far from their hero, Jesus had speedily become their handy scapegoat. Jesus’ death cry? “Why have you abandoned me? Where did everyone go? The capriciousness of crowds.
This Passion Sunday, in this dreadful time of quarantine and triage medicine, we are afforded the opportunity to reflect upon the things that bind us as a people, the dynamics that weave our social fabric. Amid that reflection, the gospel of Jesus Christ, poses the piercing challenge as to whether we find our connection to one another amidst the crowd in all its fickle loyalties, or whether we surrender ourselves to the communion offered us by the grace of G-D, the communion forged in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the communion manifested in the bread and wine of Eucharist, the body and blood of the One who beckons us to a life beyond destruction.
In this ironic moment, we know ourselves to be irreversibly connected, yet woefully alone. Biologically wired and vulnerable not only to one another, but to all species on the planet, all creatures of our G-D and King. And yet we find ourselves apart and isolated by physical threat, emotional fear.
And yet…
In this time, as in 1st century Palestine, Jesus is present, opening in our midst a space for communion in his name – an entwinement of our lives that neither threatens nor harms. However, be assured this communion is not without cost. We must surrender to the ONE who called us into being – by adopting a life of thanksgiving for the mystery of life in G-D’s grace, as well as a life of service to all those with whom we share this life.
This year, we have neither palms nor processions – no means of gathering in thanksgiving and service. Nevertheless, we are afforded the chance to recover and deepen our gratitude for the simple, yet profound gift of being gathered – not merely as a crowd in search here of fleeting heroes and there for enduring scapegoats. Rather, truly gathered, in recognition of life’s beauty and frailty. Gathered, in grateful service for the revelation of this life’s mystery and majesty through the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ. We are not alone.
“Where did everyone go? … it’s like a ghost town!”
In an earlier time, we had an old-fashioned English word to reference the mystery of G-D at work in the world: Holy Ghost.
Perhaps in this strange, perplexing moment, we can pray to be joined with all those prepared to take this wheezing ghost town and fashion it into a gathering in the power of the Holy Ghost. A communion not of our own making, but rather the one that Jesus revealed in his life, death and resurrection. The communion made possible by the Spirit he breathed out upon his disciples.
Yes, we are currently apart. We are not alone.
Communion amid chaos.