Bishop Solis celebrates Palm Sunday Mass

IC photo/Marie Mischel

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Bishop Solis blesses the palms with holy water during the 11 a.m. Palm Sunday Mass at the Cathedral of the Madeleine.

SALT LAKE CITY — “Palm Sunday is a beautiful celebration of our faith and salvation,” Bishop Oscar A. Solis said during his homily at the 11 a.m. Mass on Palm Sunday at the Cathedral of the Madeleine.

Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem, which is commemorated during Palm Sunday, was joyous, but those acclamations didn’t last long; only a few days later the crowd that welcomed him as a messiah reversed their cries from “Hail to the son of David” to “Crucify him!” the bishop pointed out.

Therefore, Palm Sunday is also called Passion Sunday, because of the infidelity of the people, the denial and abandonment of his apostles and close friends, Bishop Solis said. “It was one of the saddest moments in the life of Christ, giving himself with all his love to people, only to be denied, to be rejected and to be crucified.”

The Pascal mystery is the heart of the Catholic faith, the bishop said. “As we enter into Holy Week we are invited to reflect on this great mystery of our salvation, but not only to reflect but to unite our own hearts and our lives in the suffering and death and rising of our Lord. It may be a sad and scandalous event, full of contradictions on how people treated Jesus, but yet there is a great message – there is a message of hope, of love, a message of forgiveness and a message of salvation and redemption for all of us.”

The infidelity, denial and abandonment of people “is still happening in our very own life,” Bishop Solis said. He pointed out that people often acknowledge God in the good times, but when the time comes to contribute to the mission of the Church; to proclaim the dignity of human life; to manifest the love of God to the poor, the homeless, addicts, the undocumented, or to people in the LGBT community, “then it seems we have turned our backs to God,” he said. “We change drastically. We start denying Jesus. We start forgetting the commandments of love – the love of God and the love of our neighbor. We forget the Christian way of compassion, of mercy, of forgiveness, of inclusiveness.”

However, God is forgiving and never tires of welcoming people back into his embrace, the bishop said.

“That is what we celebrate this Holy Week. We celebrate the great love of God – so great, so endless, so sincere, so endless that he keeps on forgiving each and every one of us in spite of and despite our denial of him and turning our backs on him when he needed most our love for our Lord,” he said. “So the message of hope, the message of forgiveness, the message of love is loud and clear during this Holy Week.”