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Together we are entering Holy Week Passion/Palm Sunday is the gateway to this special week. We’ll be celebrating all our liturgies online – see our links on this page for both the live streams and recordings of those liturgies on social media for your convenience. Thank you for joining us!

We all wish that we all could physically be present for the celebrations of Holy Week, beginning with Palm/Passion Sunday. Processions, crowds, palm & branch waving, singing, proclaiming the triumph of Jesus entering Jerusalem – that’s what is in our Gospel story and what we choose to reflect on every year to help us focus on all Christ did for us. And we would be doing those full celebrations in person, but the passion of coronavirus has caught up with us this year. So, what can we do?

Over the last two millennia the Church has continued to develop its liturgies. It takes a long time to come to decisions about what we remember, how it is celebrated, and then to work out the details for every place that will celebrate it. I’ve celebrated Holy Week in Jerusalem, Rome, many other places, and am now in Chicago – and it has been the same liturgy all the time, with variations for Church communities, buildings, languages and so forth. But the same liturgy, same story, same expectations everywhere I’ve gone and been. I’ve gotten used to all the Holy Week liturgies.

Maybe it is strangely helpful in the midst of our virus pandemic to think about what we are not going to be involved with this year. I know - we’ll do the basics on camera - but if we take a step back maybe this time apart gets us to the real point of Holy Week, Triduum and Easter. The point is the love of God given us with so much power that it transforms all life.

Jesus Passion, Death and Resurrection were not simple historical events. It did not just have repercussions for Jerusalem and the Jewish people, it had universal consequences. That’s why Christians who claim Christ as part of their own enclave miss the point – Jesus did what he did for EVERYBODY, not just some special group. And I do mean, he did it for everybody!

As we celebrate our liturgies from the safety of our homes doing social distancing, protecting each other – we are living Christ’s way, by loving one another. We love each other by caring not just about ourselves, our families, our neighborhoods but everybody around us. If we stop and think of Christ’s story in this time, we have the opportunity to really understand the gift of love, by God, that will overcome this pandemic.

God’s Blessings on all of you! Be well! Know you are prayed for!

Fr. Brad Schoeberle, CSP,
Pastor

Check our collaborators links for the wide range of Christ’s Love Network: www.paulist.org, www.archdioceseofchicago.org, www.vatican.va and our Renew My Church Group:

www.holynamecathedral.org, www.stjameswabash.org, www.assumption-chgo.org, www.oldstpats.org, www.stpetersloop.org.