17 MARCH – PASSION SUNDAY

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Today, if you hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your hearts.

The Holy Church begins her Night Office of this Sunday with these impressive words of the Royal Prophet. Formerly, the faithful considered it their duty to assist at the Night Office, at least on Sundays and Feasts. They would have grieved to have lost the grand teachings given by the Liturgy. Such fervour has long since died out. The assiduity at the Offices of the Church, which was the joy of our Catholic forefathers, has now become a thing of the past, and even in countries which have not apostatised from the faith, the clergy have ceased to celebrate publicly Offices at which no-one assisted. Excepting in cathedral churches and in monasteries, the grand harmonious system of the Divine Praise has been abandoned, and the marvellous power of the Liturgy has no longer its full influence upon the faithful.

This is our reason for drawing the attention of our readers to certain beauties of the Divine Office, which would otherwise be totally ignored. Thus, what can be more expressive than this solemn Invitatory of today’s Matins, which the Church takes from one of the psalms, and which she repeats on every Feria between this and Maundy Thursday?

She says: Today, if you hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your hearts! The sweet voice of your suffering Jesus now speaks to you, poor sinners! Be not your own enemies by indifference and hardness of heart. The Son of God is about to give you the last and greatest proof of the love that brought Him down from heaven. His Death is near at hand: men are preparing the wood for the immolation of the new Isaac. Enter into yourselves and let not your hearts, after being touched with grace, return to their former obduracy, for nothing could be more dangerous. The great anniversaries we are to celebrate have a renovating power for those souls that faithfully correspond with the grace which is offered them, but they increase insensibility in those who let them pass without working their conversion. Today, therefore, if you hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your hearts!

During the preceding four weeks we have noticed how the malice of Jesus’ enemies has been gradually increasing. His very presence irritates them, and it is evident that any little circumstance will suffice to bring the deep and long nurtured hatred to a head. The kind and gentle manners of Jesus are drawing to Him all hearts that are simple and upright. At the same time, the humble life He leads, and the stern purity of His doctrines, are perpetual sources of vexation and anger, both to the proud Jew that looks forward to the Messiah being a mighty conqueror, and to the Pharisee who corrupts the Law of God, that he may make it the instrument of his own base passions. Still, Jesus goes on working miracles. his discourses are more than ever energetic. His prophecies foretell the fall of Jerusalem, and such a destruction of its famous Temple, that not a stone is to be left on a stone. The doctors of the Law should at least reflect upon what they hear. They should examine these wonderful works which render such strong testimony in favour of the Son of David, and they should consult those divine prophecies which up to the present time have been so literally fulfilled in His person. Alas, they themselves are about to carry them out to the very last iota. There is not a single outrage or suffering foretold by David and Isaias as having to be put upon the Messiah which these blind men are not scheming to verify. In them, therefore, was fulfilled that terrible saying: “He that will speak against the Holy Ghost, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in the world to come” (Matthew xii. 32). The Synagogue is near to a curse. Obstinate in her error, she refuses to see or to hear. She has deliberately perverted her judgement. She has extinguished within herself the light of the Holy Spirit. She will go deeper and deeper into evil, and at length fall into the abyss. This same lamentable conduct is but too often witnessed nowadays in those sinners who, by habitual resistance to the light, end by finding their happiness in sin. Neither should it surprise us that we find in people of our own generation a resemblance to the murderers of our Jesus: the history of His Passion will reveal to us many sad secrets of the human heart and its perverse inclinations, for what happened in Jerusalem happens also in every sinner’s heart. His heart, according to the saying of Saint Paul, is a Calvary where Jesus is crucified. There is the same ingratitude, the same blindness, the same wild madness, with this difference: that the sinner who is enlightened by faith knows Him whom he crucifies, whereas the Jews, as the same Apostle tells us, knew not the Lord of Glory (1 Corinthians ii. 8). While, therefore, we listen to the Gospel which relates the history of the Passion, let us turn the indignation we feel for the Jews against ourselves and our own sins. Let us weep over the sufferings of our Victim, for our sins caused Him to suffer and die.

Everything around us urges us to mourn. The images of the saints, the very crucifix on our altar, are veiled from our sight. The Church is oppressed with grief. During the first four weeks of Lent she compassionated her Jesus fasting in the desert. His coming sufferings and crucifixion and death are what now fill her with anguish. We read in today’s Gospel that the Jews threaten to stone the Son of God as a blasphemer, but His hour is not yet come. He is obliged to flee and hide Himself. It is to express this deep humiliation that the Church veils the Cross. A God hiding Himself, that He may evade the anger of men — what a mystery! Is it weakness? Is it that He fears death? No, we will soon see Him going out to meet His enemies. But at present He hides Himself from them, because all that had been prophesied regarding Him has not been fulfilled. Besides, His death is not to be by stoning: He is to die on a Cross, the tree of malediction, which, from that time forward is to be the Tree of Life.

Let us humble ourselves, as we see the Creator of heaven and earth thus obliged to hide Himself from men who are bent on His destruction! Let us go back in thought to the sad day of the first sin when Adam and Eve hid themselves because a guilty conscience told them they were naked. Jesus is come to assure us of our being pardoned! and lo, He hides Himself, not because He is naked —He that is to the Saints the garb of holiness and immortality — but because He made Himself weak, that He might make us strong. Our first parents sought to hide themselves from the sight of God. Jesus hides Himself from the eye of men, but it will not be thus forever. The day will come when sinners from whose anger He now flees will pray to the mountains that they fall on them to shield them from His gaze, but their prayer will not be granted, and they will see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with much power and majesty.

This Sunday is called Passion Sunday because the Church begins on this day to make the sufferings of our Redeemer her chief thought. It is called also Judica from the first word of the Introit of the Mass, and again, Neomania, that is, the Sunday of the new (or the Easter) moon, because it always falls after the new moon which regulates the Feast of Easter Day.

In the Greek Church, this Sunday goes under the simple name of the Fifth Sunday of the Holy Fasts.

Epistle – Hebrews ix. 11‒15

Brethren, Christ having come, a high priest of the good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, neither by the blood of goats or of calves, but by His own blood, entered once into the Holies, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and of oxen, and the ashes of an heifer being sprinkled, sanctify such as are defiled, to the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who, by the Holy Spirit, offered Himself without a spot to God, cleanse our conscience from dead works, to serve the living God? And therefore He is the Mediator of the New Testament, and by means of His death, for the redemption of those transgressions which were under the former testament; they that are called may receive the promise of eternal inheritance, in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

It is by Blood alone that man is to be redeemed. He has offended God. This God cannot be appeased by anything short of the extermination of his rebellious creature, who, by shedding his blood, will give an earnest of his repentance and his entire submission to the Creator against whom he dared to rebel. Otherwise, the justice of God must be satisfied by the sinner’s suffering eternal punishment. This truth was understood by all the people of the ancient world, and all confessed it by shedding the blood of victims, as in the sacrifices of Abel, at the very commencement of the world, in the hecatombs of Greece, in the countless immolations by which Solomon dedicated the Temple. And yet God thus speaks to His people: “Hear, my people, and I will speak: Israel, and I will testify to you: I am God your God. I will not reprove you for your sacrifices, and your burnt-offerings are always in my sight. I will not take calves out of your house, nor he-goats out of your flocks. I need them not: for all the beasts of the woods are mine. If I should be hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and the fullness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bullocks? Or will I drink the blood of goats? (Psalm xlis. 7‒13) Thus God commands the blood of victims to be offered to Him and, at the same time, declares that neither it nor they are precious in His sight. Is this a contradiction? No. God would by this have man understand that it is only by Blood that he can be redeemed, but that the blood of brute animals cannot effect this redemption. Can the blood of man himself bring him his own redemption, and appease God’s justice? No, not even man’s blood, for it is denied, and even were it undefiled, it is powerless to compensate for the outrage done to God by sin. For this, there was needed the Blood of a God. That was the Blood of Jesus, and He has come that He may shed it for our redemption.

In Him is fulfilled the most sacred of the figures of the Old Law. Once each year, the High Priest entered into the Holy of Holies, there to make intercession for the people. He went within the Veil to the Ark of the Covenant, but he was not allowed to enjoy this great privilege unless he entered the holy place carrying in his hands the blood of a newly-offered victim. The Son of God, the true High Priest, is now about to enter heaven, and we are to follow him there, but unto this, He must have an offering of blood, and that Blood can be none other than His own. We are going to assist at this His compliance with the divine ordinance. Let us open our hearts that this precious Blood may, as the Apostle says in today’s Epistle, cleanse our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

Gospel – John xiii. 46‒59

At that time Jesus said to the multitude of the Jews, “Which of you will convince me of sin? If I say the truth to you, why do you not believe me? He that is of God hears the words of God. Therefore you hear them not because you are not of God.” The Jews therefore answered and said to Him, “Do not we say well, that you are a Samaritan and have a devil?” Jesus answered, “I have not a devil, but I honour my Father, and you have dishonoured me. I seek not my own glory. There is one that seeks and judges. Amen, Amen, I say to you, if any man will keep my word, He will not see death forever.” The Jews therefore said, “Now we know that you have a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets. And you say, ‘If any man keeps my word, he will not taste death forever.’ Are you greater than our father Abraham, who is dead? and the prophets who are dead. Who do you make yourself to be?” Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say that He is your God. And you have not known Him, but I know Him. And if I will say that I know Him not, I will be like to you, a liar. But I do know Him, and I keep His word. Abraham your father rejoiced that he might see my day. He saw it, and was glad.” The Jews therefore said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham was made, I am.” They took up stones therefore to cast at Him but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple.

Praise be to you, O Christ.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

The fury of the Jews is evidently at its height, and Jesus is obliged to hide Himself from them. But He is to fall into their hands before many days are over. Then will they triumph and put Him to death. They triumph, and Jesus is their victim: but how different is to be his lot from their ! In obedience to the decrees of His heavenly Father, and out of love for men, He will deliver Himself into the hands of His enemies, and they will put Him to death, but He will rise victorious from the tomb, He will ascend into heaven, He will be throned on the right hand of His Father. His enemies on the contrary, after having vented all their rage, will live on without remorse until the terrible day come for their chastisement.

That day is not far off, for observe the severity with which our Lord speaks to them: “You hear not the words of God, because you are not of God.” Yet there was a time, when they were of God, for the Lord gives His grace to all men, but they have rendered this grace useless. They are now in darkness, and the light they have rejected will not return.

“You say that my Father is your God, and you have not known Him, but I know Him.” Their obstinacy in refusing to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah has led these men to ignore that very God whom they boast of honouring, for if they knew the Father, they would not reject His Son. Moses and the Psalms and the Prophets are all a dead letter to them. These sacred Books are soon to pass into the hands of the Gentiles who will both read and understand them. “If” continues Jesus, “you should say that I know Him not, I should be like you, a liar.” This strong language is that of the angry Judge who is to come down at the last day to destroy sinners. Jerusalem has not known the time of her visitation: the Son of God has visited her, He is with her, and she dares to say to Him: “You have a devil!” She says to the Eternal Word, who proves Himself to be God by the most astounding miracles, that Abraham and the Prophets are greater than He! Strange blindness, that comes from pride and hardness of heart! The Feast of the Pasch is at hand: these men are going to eat, and with much parade of religion, the flesh of the figurative lamb. They know full well that this lamb is a symbol or a figure which is to have its fulfilment. The true Lamb is to be sacrificed by their hands, and they will not know Him. He will shed his Blood for them, and it will not save them. How this reminds us of those sinners for whom this Easter promises to be as fruitless as those of the past years! Let us redouble our prayers for them, and beseech our Lord to soften their hearts, lest trampling the Blood of Jesus under their feet, they should have it to cry vengeance against them before the throne of the heavenly Father.