There is a running joke about "Catholic guilt". That, no matter what we are doing, good or bad, we always feel guilty about something. That's why we have confession, that's why we have a crucifix instead of a cross, because we have such guilt about Christ's death. I laughingly mentioned this to another Catholic friend one day, saying, "I've always felt guilty about everything! It's one way I knew I was meant to be Catholic!" She smiled and shouted out at me, "No! Catholic guilt is false! You can't feel guilty about love! Jesus gave us a gift, He did everything out of love for us!" Boy, did that shift my perspective!
Today is Palm Sunday, now one of my favorite masses of the year, thanks to that conversation. During the celebration, the Passion of Christ is proclaimed for the gospel reading. One person reads as narrator, one as the secondary, the priest reads as Jesus, and we in the congregation play the role of the crowd.
At one time, I thought this was so we could feel the weight of our sin that Jesus bore for us in His Passion and death. After all, we are the ones for whom He suffered. But this morning, I thought back to that conversation about Catholic guilt. We read the parts of Christ's condemners, not out of guilt, but out of gratefulness.
In the garden of Gethsamene, Jesus wept bitterly, fiercely loving each one of us. Jesus was fully aware of what lie ahead of Him. But He stepped forward anyway, out of divine love for us.
His disciples tried to discourage Him from going to Jerusalem, but He knew that the words of the prophets had to be fulfilled through His death.
As He hung on the cross at Golgotha, each of our faces flashed before Him as He said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing."
The road to Jerusalem is a tough road, but Christ Jesus struggled down it with the weight of His cross and our sins. So let us join with James and John and Mary Magdalene and the other disciples and go to Jerusalem ourselves, a place of pain, suffering, and ultimately death. For we, like Jesus, know what awaits us in Jerusalem at the end of the story. Victory over death and eternal life with Jesus!