Happy Palm Sunday. Via Rorate Caeli, we would like to share some portions for reflection from the wonderful sermon by the Right Reverend Dom Jean Pateau, Abbot of Our Lady of Fontgombault. In these dark days, let us never forget to turn to the Scriptures and Saints, especially the intercession of the Mother of God, for our well-being. It is only in humble reliance that God may conquer through us.

We open now the way of Holy Week, a painful week, in the image of the time of epidemic we are going through. For the ceremonies, the churches’ doors, as well as the houses’ doors, will remain closed.

May the Lord come and visit us, as His disciples after His resurrection, “Januis clausis,” the doors being closed. He will make light of any closed door, if the hearts’ doors are open to Him. Far away from the churches, revive your family liturgy by the meditation of the so rich liturgical texts, the Rosary, the practice of a true charity between yourselves. Dioceses and communities make several tools available.

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What is the disposition of mind we should bring into play? We know it well: love, generosity, humility, forgiveness, obedience to God, self-giving. More radically, if we truly want our lives to be Christ, it is our whole being that should convert, not only what we do. Let us boldly confront this question.

Christ obedient unto death, and the shameful death of the cross, entrusts His soul to His Father. The Father gives Him the Name above all names. Christ’s death and resurrection, that is the whole of the Paschal mystery. When we die to sin, Christ’s death is fulfilled in us. When Christ rises, He raises us to life with Him.

During these days, let us take time with the Crucified, both personally and together as a family. Let us ask for each other, let us ask for our families, our communities, for our country, and for the whole world, through the intercession of Mary standing at the foot of the Cross, the grace to live a week that should not be holy merely because of the events taking place in it, but above all because of the conversion of our hearts and the reception of the grace of Easter.

In these days that are dark, but pregnant with hope, an old world is dying. May there rise in Christ a renewed world.

Amen