Today we enter, with the church throughout the world, a deep, sacred time. The church= s faith understanding its relationship with God celebrates the feast of God= s redemptive work and in the process renews that work year by year. So we need to enter and open our hearts to God= s redemptive love for 2006.

Jesus enters the Passion with passion, that is, he= s totally committed to his mission. He’s clear sighted, he knows what he= s about, and he commits his whole being to it. If you have been listening to the texts that the church uses for the past week you hear tremendous tension and rejection that is mounted to the point of no return. So when Jesus got up on that Sunday and decided to set his direction to Jerusalem he had a choice. He knew that the Scribes and the Pharisees hated him and they were out to kill him. He knew that the Chief Priests hated him out of envy and a few other things were also out to get him. But the Sadducees party was also out to get him because he disturbed their comfortable zones because they were rich and wealthy and had control and they were beginning to sense that they were going to loose that, so they joined the Pharisees with the intention of getting rid of Jesus.

The common people even though they had experienced healing and the power of Jesus= healing miracles, were all excited because they had a sense that he was indeed the Messiah. So Jesus knows the mentality of the people that he= s going to encounter. What does he do? He sends the apostles to get a foul of an ass, a little donkey, and when they bring it to him he rides on it. Why did he do that? Because when people have their minds set against you, you cannot argue with them, you cannot discuss with them, they= re not open, they could care less. So Jesus was performing another act of love and opportunity for the community to recognize that he is indeed the Messiah, the king of the Jews. Because the Jewish community knew the scriptures and they knew Zechariah the prophet and they knew that he said, A Behold your king will come to you riding on an ass.@ So Jesus was not threatened by their threats but responding to say, "Look I am your Messiah." If you want that= s the message. The message he= s really saying, "I am the Messiah! I am the king! And I come to save you but not as you expect!" That’s the message that Jesus is proclaiming as he comes into Jerusalem.

So he remains, as the first reading says, with his heart set like flint, on his purpose. What does he do? He gives everything. First of all he accomplishes the goal he set out to do. By the passion and death of Jesus, Satan is conquered. Satan is the ruler of this world unless you surrender to Jesus because Jesus conquered Satan. He conquered death because he is life and he conquered the roots of sin so that he fulfilled his purpose to reconcile us with God. Heaven and earth are now mutually accessible for those who are with and in Christ and believe him and follow him. We have access to the very center of the mystery of the Trinity. Not only that he fulfills all the prophecies, which means there= s an abundance of grace available to all of us and each of us who believe. Abundance, not piddily little thing. Not just enough to get over the sin and get over this problem, oh no, and more, because we see on the cross, what did he give first, he gave forgiveness. A Father, forgive them they know not what they do!@ Secondly, he gave us heaven. A Today you will be with me in paradise.@ Thirdly, he gave us the Blessed Mother. Some people don= t seem to appreciate this gift. They don= t understand that Mary is really our mother. If you know anything about mothers they= re always mothering you! When I was five years ordained a priest and Easter came my mother came to the abbey with an Easter basket. I knew exactly what she= s saying: A Look, you= re my son!@ She= s still mothering me.

Now Mary, A Woman behold your son. Son behold your Mother.@ Which means we have a tremendous gift our whole life through the gift of the Blessed Mother. He gave his body and his blood. And he gave himself. So he gave us everything! Of course it cost him everything. And how have we responded?

The gospels are always a mirror of the human race in its relationship to God and each of us in relationship to God. So we don= t celebrate the past. We celebrate the tremendous passionate love God has for us, revealed in Jesus, and at the same time we see how we are saying nuts to you!, no different than the people at that time.

I had a whole section prepared for this homily but I thought if I say that the monks will start charging me maybe hang me. But let me just give you just one example of our present problem. Pope Paul VI wrote an encycal Homane Vitae and in there he said: A If you allow conception to be played with and use contraceptives, etc., here what= s going to happen. He says there= s going to be more and more distortion and sexuality. He says the women will be more and more degraded and he said there will be breakdown in marriage and he said that we would end up with more and more abortions. That was over 40 years ago. And it all happened. Not only that there= s tremendous consequences, right? Whole nations have minus reproduction of their own species so that Europe is becoming an Islamic community. If it keeps at this rate there is no return. It has tremendous economic, social, political consequences as well. Besides the more terrible thing the sin of the abuse of the gift of sexuality.

The whole passion in America is saying basically look I am here, I am your Savior, I am working on your salvation NOW! He said it then, and is still true today. I am your Savior, I am your redeemer. Come, let me redeem you. Do we believe this? How do we respond to it?  How do we open ourselves to it? Just have some fun today. First say to Jesus personally, A Jesus I love you!@ And listen to the tone, the depth, and the authenticity of that statement that you make when you say it to him. Is it mere words? Does it include your will?  Does it include your action? Is there any sacrifice that you made for him when you say I love you? Is there any love in the statement?  A caring attitude that you have for Jesus and for his agenda, not yours?

We are celebrating the most important truth and reality in the whole world. There is one thing we can be absolutely sure of that we can build our life on it and the whole world= s life on it and build community it is Jesus Christ and his merciful love for us because Paul says you can count on this that while we were yet sinners Jesus died for us.

So we don= t celebrate the past, we= re celebrating the present. We are absolutely sure there is someone next to the throne who loves us in great mercy and we can build our lives our family, our nation on him. That= s the only real solid certainty for good in this world. Everything else is connected to this that= s good. And everything good flows from it.

So the question remains, this is the year 2006 God is in our midst as Paul says, A reconciling the world to himself, through his Son.@ And how do we respond?  Are we sleeping?  Do the events pass us by this week?  Do we betray him with deliberate sin?  Not just mortal sin but even venial sin? Hopefully we don= t hate him.

So what the Lord is looking for from us is do we appreciate and open ourselves up to the love that is trying to redeem us?