Is it Palm Sunday already? Seems like Ash Wednesday was just yesterday. As the old saying goes: “Life comes at you fast, and change happens in an instant.” 

Indeed, it does; the last weeks have seemed like a roller coaster ride with peaks and valleys coming in fast succession.  

Here in the East, we’ve seen glimpses of Spring, while elsewhere there were extremes of cold and catastrophic flooding. We’ve felt joy with the gifts of new life; we’ve also felt the pain of the death of loved ones.  

The daily news tells us stories of violence, cruelty, and heartbreaking human suffering, but we also hear about acts of love within the community and the immense goodness of the human spirit.  

There’s a tension between these opposites that we also see in the Holy Week story.  

We begin with the glorious procession and jubilant crowds waving palms and shouting their “Hosannas.” Can we visualize that, hear the shouting, feel the joy? 

Then, very quickly, we are called to experience Jesus on the road to Calvary and his Crucifixion. We can feel the pain and the grief of his suffering and death.  

As we enter this Holy Week, can we hold this tension between joy and despair—the contradictions between Palm Sunday and Good Friday? God called us to this Lenten journey nearly 40 days ago and has stayed with us. Can we, like Jesus, stay rooted in the hope of God’s everlasting love through life’s peaks and valleys?  

This is, according to Pope Francis, “the Christian hope,” which he tells us, “is not facile optimism…it is the certainty, rooted in love and faith, that God never abandons us and remains faithful to his promise.” 

Can you be that voice of Christian hope for others as we live, once again, through the emotional highs and lows of Holy Week?