WobLog

We receive a weekly e-mail newsletter with information about the Traditional Latin Mass at our parish. The Holy Week edition opened with the following:

When asked about Palm Sunday in the young Catechism class today, 4-year-old Alex correctly answered that Our Lord Jesus Christ was entering the city of Jerusalem.  Then the question was posed: ‘And how did Our Lord enter Jerusalem?’ Young Alex enthusiastically replied, ‘He took the bottom of the cross and knocked on the door!’

You see – Alex attended Mass here at St. Margaret Mary on Palm Sunday, and saw the knocking on the church door! Palm Sunday certainly made a deeper impression on me this year. Last year I thought the blessing of the palms was awesome. This year the added procession and the prayer and knocking at the Church door were truly moving.

Then imagine reading about this exact portion of our Sunday liturgy in the Holy Father’s Palm Sunday homily! In it he referred to this knocking at the door:

In the old liturgy of Palm Sunday, the priest, having arrived in front of the Church, knocked forcefully with the bar of the processional cross on the still closed door, which, following this knocking, was opened. It was a beautiful image for the mystery of the same Jesus Christ who, with the wood of his cross, with the force of his love that he gives to us, has knocked from the side of the world on the door of God; from the side of a world that was not able to find access to God. By the cross Jesus has thrown open the door to God, the door between God and man. Now it is open. But, even from the other side the Lord knocks with his cross: he knocks on the door of the world, on the door of our hearts that so often and in so many ways are closed for God. And he speaks to us more or less like this: if the trials that God gives you in creation don’t succeed in opening you up for Him, if the words of Scripture and the message of the Church leave you indifferent – then, look at me, your Lord and your God.

The entire homily (with photographs of the Pope) can be read here.

If you hadn't already guessed it, the young fellow who made the same Palm Sunday connection that the Holy Father preached on was our little boy!