Palm Sunday: Daily Lenten Medications

LONELY SUFFERING 

To suffer at all is a thing from which our nature shrinks instinctively. But to suffer alone, ah! that is to make the suffering doubly to be dreaded. Companionship in my hour of trial is a very precious boon. When sorrow has come to harrow my soul or when ills of body shackle my tortured limbs to a bed of pain, how good beyond all telling to find by my side a friend to pour the balm of his strong affection upon the wound that gnaws at my heart or, by his comforting presence, hearten my failing courage to bear my physical sufferings.

Yes, friendly companionship is a precious thing in the hour of suffering. But what of those other hours when we must suffer alone? What of those hours when the anguish of my soul lies hidden in such secret closets that even my dearest earthly friend is utterly excluded from its sharing? What of those hours when the forms that pass my bed of pain are strangers and the eyes that look upon my suffering are unkindled with the light of friendly sympathy? What then? Ah, then, if I would bear my suffering in a Christian way, then must I go in spirit to the moonlit Olive Garden and kneel by the side of the loneliest of all lonely sufferers, Christ Jesus. He who bore in awful solitude the horrors of Gethsemane’s midnight agony—the soul-torturing and the crushing physical pain, will understand full well my lonely suffering and, by His loving sympathy, soothe the hurts that sear my spirit.

Yes, life will have its suffering, for such is our lot here below, yet there will be sweetness mingled with the cup of bitterness whose dregs I must drain if only I drink it with Jesus as He drinks, in lonely abandonment, Gethsemane’s chalice of untellable woe.

O Sweetest Heart of Jesus, I implore that I may ever love You more and more.

EPISTLE AND GOSPEL:  Taken from the Angelus Press 1962 Roman Catholic Daily Missal

EPISTLE:  Phil. 2: 5-11

The triumph of the Redeemer of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ, must be preceded by “His humiliation unto death, even the death of the cross.”

Brethren, let this mind be in you which was also in Jesus Christ: Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and inhabit found as a man. He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross. For which cause God also hath exalted Him, and hath given Him a name which is above all names that in the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.

GOSPEL  (At blessing of Palms):  Mt. 21: 1-9

Triumphant entry of our Lord Jesus Christ into Jerusalem.

At that time, when Jesus drew nigh to Jerusalem, and was come to Beth-phage, unto Mount Olivet, then He sent two disciples, saying to them: Go ye into the village that is over against you and immediately you shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her; loose them and bring them to Me. And if any man shall say anything to you, say ye that the Lord hath need of them, and forthwith he will let them go. Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: Tell ye the daughter of Sion: Behold thy King cometh to thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of her that is used to the yoke. And the disciples going did as Jesus commanded them. And they brought the ass and the colt, and laid their garments upon them, and made Him sit thereon. And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way, and others cut boughs from the trees, and strewed them in the way, and the multitudes that went before and that followed cried, saying: Hosanna to the Son of David: blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.