My dear brothers and sisters in Christ. Today all Catholics throughout the world turn their hearts and minds once again to the suffering and death of Jesus Christ.

That suffering won for all mankind the definitive victory over sin and hopelessness - a victory we declare and celebrate with these palm branches, the ancient world's symbol of triumph. But let's dig deeper into this mystery of our salvation. Let's not be satisfied with the symbols.

God is all-powerful. He could have chosen to save us from sin in many other ways. Why did he choose to do it by suffering? What is the meaning of the Passion? The Passion tells us with perfect clarity the message we most need to hear. The Passion of Our Lord says to us: God is faithful; you can trust him.

Trusting God is the most important thing for us, but it's also the hardest, because our trust has been violated. We have all been wounded because people we trusted let us down, in little things and big things. As a result, we have all built up walls around our hearts, to protect ourselves from being let down again. But those walls also keep out God.

God knows that unless we let him into our hearts, we can never experience the happiness we long for. So, he came up with a way to win back our trust: the Passion of Christ.The Passion is God saying to us: "No matter what you do, I will keep on loving you. I will never let you down." If we reject him, scourge him, crown him with thorns, betray him, even if we crucify him, he continues to love us: "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."

God's love and faithfulness doesn't depend on us being perfect, and it doesn't depend on his whims. He will never take it back. We can trust him - completely. That's the message of the Passion. And it's the message that each of us, wounded and sinful as we are, most needs to hear. We have to learn to trust God more and more in order to be transformed by him into the kind of person we know we should be.

A Parable about a Princess

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a king who ruled a vast and beautiful kingdom.

This king had a young daughter, whom he loved and treasured more than anyone or anything else. But one day the king and his knights had to leave the safety of his castle and travel to a distant land to protect the kingdom.

The king wanted desperately to take his daughter along with him, but he knew it was far too dangerous. This grieved the king greatly and when he told his daughter, she was also distressed. But he promised her that he would return in time.

This heartened the girl, and she kissed her father goodbye and watched him from her window until he disappeared over the horizon.

Time went by, and the king did not return. He was gone so long, in fact, that evil men came and took over the castle, imprisoning the king's daughter, and enslaving all the people.

Every day, with tears in her eyes, the girl would look out into the dark clouds and wish for her father to come back; but he never came. One day the sun disappeared entirely, and the whole kingdom was dark for three days...

...Until at last, one small light could be seen on the horizon, and it grew and it grew until it lit up the entire kingdom. And there upon the castle steps the king himself appeared.

He was tired and gaunt; his clothes were torn and his armor was damaged from the many battles he had fought; his hands and feet were wounded and scarred, but his face was bright with a brilliant smile of love.

His daughter came running down the steps into his arms and cried joyful tears while he held her in his arms. The King said to his beloved daughter, "There is no need to be afraid anymore. I will never have to go away again. Our enemies are conquered and we are safe forever."

And that day, a voice from heaven was heard all across the land: "Fear no more, O daughter Zion; see, your king has come." The king in the story kept his promise, and our King, Jesus, does too.

Share the Good News

Today and throughout this week we have a chance to renew our trust in this God who went to such great lengths to prove that he is trustworthy. This is a chance to let this truth heal the wounds of our hearts and renew our lives.

But we shouldn't think only of ourselves. Many people have been wounded and have erected walls around their hearts, and they have never heard the message of the Passion.

There are two ways that each one of us can make this Holy Week truly holy, not only for ourselves, but for those around us, can be a living image of Christ's Passion to those around us: by words and by deeds.

By our words. We should not be afraid to speak of Christ and the meaning of his Passion. We are his messengers. He wants to reach out to others through us. Who needs to hear the message? Maybe we can think of someone right away. Maybe we just need to be ready and willing, so that the Holy Spirit can work through us. zAnd by our deeds. This week, we can image Christ's Passion by doing what he did, by sharing our neighbor's burdens, by taking upon ourselves the crosses of others.

Today, on this day when we celebrate the victory of Christ's love, let's ask Christ to show us what to do, and let's promise him that we will not keep the victory to ourselves, that we will carry the palm branch not only in Church, but everywhere we go, that we will do our part to be conquerors with Christ.