Palm Sunday 2006

Almighty God, we pray you bless these branches and make them holy. Today we joyfully acclaim Jesus our Messiah and King. May we reach one day the happiness of the new and everlasting Jerusalem by faithfully following him who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

We have made it to the homestretch - Palm Sunday has come and we now enter into the Holiest of weeks. For us here in Rome, who were able to go to St. Peter's for Mass, it was an amazing experience. I can honestly say that I have never experienced a liturgy that had so many elements too it, everything from the sheer composition of the crowd to the actual way the Mass was liturgically celebrated. It had something for everyone, yet it all fit together (unlike some of those other "composite" Masses that we have all experienced...).

For starters, it was not only Palm Sunday, but also the concluding celebration for this year's World Youth Day, and a Mass which included the transferring of the WYD cross and icon to the Australians by the Germans (speaking from WYD Cologne experience... I presume they were a bit glad to hand it off to somebody else!). So the whole square was utterly packed with not only "normal" Italians and pilgrims, but gadzillions of youth groups. It really did feel like WYD here!

Ok - and then of course the primary reason for the day was Palm Sunday. I will never go into my home parish and just pick up a meager single palm frond the same way again - just wait until you see these photos! We're not talking fronds, and we're not even talking palms, we're talking olive branches here people! When we first made the mad rush to get good seats, we missed out on getting our branches, so Jason and I had to make the trek back out of the area and out to the main square entrance to find some for our area. Later on, there suddenly appeared guys with massive bundles of fresh-cut olive branches going up and down the center aisle - we suddenly found ourselves with sweet-smelling olive branches under our feet and bristling all over the Square.

Hmmm... I have lots more to say about this Mass, but I guess it might be better to put it with the photos. So I'll hold off for now.

After the Mass, we met up with our in-house UST professor and his family for a fabulous lunch at Il Matriciana, a wonderful place to eat at near the Vatican.

Then - one of the coolest things ever, we went to an amazing new movie, "Into Great Silence" that you have to see! (But for most of you, first you'll have to get it into America somehow... start calling theaters now!). It is basically, to put it bluntly, a 3 hour retreat experience, connecting you in an amazing way with the life of the Carthusian monks. It is "silent" in that there is no soundtrack music, no dialogue, no script - it is quite simply living as the monks live. Amazing. It is a surprise huge hit in Europe I guess, and when we went to the theater near us for the 3:30 showing the theater was actually quite full (and it has been playing here a couple of weeks).

The Italians did pretty good too, I must say, considering how foreign the idea of watching silence must be to the modern world. There was some humor at the beginning, as there was some random chatter around the theater, with answering SSSSSSSSSHHHH, Silenzio! noises that just made it worse for a bit. (the funniest part was a brief Italian conversation between a couple of women - after one was talking really loudly she got a loud shushing, then she hollered something like, "why do you care, there's nothing to hear!", with response "that's the point!" and another response "go home and watch it on television then!" - hilarious!) Anyway, people mostly settled down and seemed really intent on what was going on.

Not only from a faith perspective, but also from an artistic perspective the film is also gorgeous. I have never heard of the filmmaker before, but you can tell that he threw his whole heart into this project, really entering into the prayer of the monks right along with them. For example, there are a few scenes that are of the monks rising in the middle of the night to chant the Liturgy of the Hours, and frequently the fade-out is of their reading lights turning off (to help them see those massive old chantbooks!) and leaving us with nothing to see in the chapel but the flicker of the sanctuary lamp and the sound of Latin. Wow. And wait until you see that Eucharistic procession! Oh man, I could go on about this movie forever, it made me want to be a monk too (ok, there are more than a few problems with this idea... :).

Suffice it to say that you HAVE to experience this movie. I really haven't been as moved by a movie since the Passion of the Christ a few years ago. Do everything you can to get it shown in your area, call the theaters, mail them, e-mail friends, plug it with anyone you know in the movie release industry... You get the idea.

So that was my day - I pray that you too received countless blessings today, as we enter into Holy Week! The next time I will see you I'll be able to sing "Jesus Christ is Risen Today". Photos, coming up next...