#passion sunday

[tinyshe]

[foreverpraying]

Today is Palm Sunday which commemorates the entrance of Christ into Jerusalem or Passion Sunday which marks the beginning of Passiontide

Photo by SHSPhotography on GettyImages

[maypoleman1]

17th March

St Patrick’s Day/St Withburga’s Day/Passion Sunday

Source: RWS website

Today is St Patrick’s Day. A Scottish myth claims that Patrick was born near Glasgow, and that he was so holy, the Devil sent witches and demons to kill him. Patrick fled to Ireland and the infuriated forces of darkness lobbed a mighty rock after him which missed and became the hill on which Dumbarton Castle now stands. The Welsh say Patrick was born in Dyfed, while the English claim he was born in in Battersea in London. In actual fact it appears Patricius was a Romano-Briton, probably born in 389 near Norton in Northamptonshire. His Irish connection comes by virtue of the fact Irish pirates, a common problem for Roman Britain in the fourth century, raided deep into the province and kidnapped the 16-year old Patricius and sold him as a slave in Ireland where he became known as Padraig, or Patrick. Freed in adulthood, Patrick set up base in Armagh and set about converting the Irish to Christianity. His efforts met with extraordinary success and Patrick ended up not only founding Celtic Christianity, but was also canonised after his death and became the deserved patron saint of Ireland.

Various stories are told of Patrick, including how he rid Ireland of snakes by gathering them all up in a box and casting it into the Irish Sea. The frenetic attempts of the serpents to escape their prison is apparently what explains the Sea’s choppy nature. He is also supposed to have used the native three-leaved shamrock as a device to explain the tricky concept of the Holy Trinity to his pagan audience. Two shrines to Patrick exist, one containing his bell, the other one of his teeth and both are in the National Museum in Dublin.

Today is also St Withburga’s Day. A seventh century Abbess, Withburga was rumoured to have cured a draught in East Dereham Norfolk, by conjuring up two deer to provide an endless supply of milk to her starving nuns. She also appears as a dead ghost: her corpse can be seen being carried in an open coffin by her grieving devotees along the banks of the Little Ouse, near Ely, Cambridgeshire.

In 2024, today is also Passion Sunday, also known as Carling Sunday. In the north east of England carlings, or grey peas, are sold this week in pubs and supermarkets. Although local tradition says this practice commemorates a shipwreck in which a cargo of carlings were washed up on the beach, it is more likely explained by a pagan tradition of eating beans to remember the dead, Christianised on this day to commemorate the upcoming Passion of Christ.

[cmcsmen]

Dying With Dignity

By Bishop Joseph N Perry of Chicago

Dying with Dignity is a touchy phrase these days – often repeated but interpreted in radically different ways. For some, dying with dignity means to be able to die without any pain and not having to depend on anyone.  Once you reach the point of not being able to take care of yourself or the point where, in your estimation, you are humbled, you should be able to die with dignity while remaining in control of your destiny and all things around you – if your mind is still ok – until you breathe your last.  Dying with dignity means still to some others the personal choice to end one’s own life either by your own hand or with the help of someone else.  The late Doctor Kevorkian’s assisted suicide to a number of people received huge headlines in past years and had become an explosive moral and civil law question.

The Church does not believe in assisted suicide. The Church does not see rhyme or reason to take one’s own life no matter how rough the pain of life might be. We all climb Mount Calvary in one way or another.  And our Good Fridays vary with their pain, no doubt.  Nevertheless, the Church and its members harbor great sympathy for those who go the way of suicide and the loved ones they leave behind while we beseech Almighty God for his mercy within the Church’s prayerfully-rich funeral rites.  In every instance of a suicide a lot of questions are left unanswered.  We see life as a precious gift of God that belongs to God and therefore has to be honored beginning with life in the womb up to and inclusive of senior age. To do anything directly to provoke death is nothing close to an honorable act, as the Church sees it.  To inject a person with a substance that ends their life is wrong.  The Church believes that is murder.

At the same time, the Church believes that we should allow ourselves and others to die when nature has taken its course.  If machines are the only things keeping a heart beating or lungs breathing, the church believes that these extraordinary and often expensive means need not be used to keep a person pulsating indefinitely when it is medically confirmed that all brain activity has ceased.  Extraordinary means this way can be chosen but need not be.  When nature signals that it is time to die then we should allow a person to die.  It is God’s Will that the person return to Him, why play a tug-a-war with God?

Sometimes, you have these situations where heaven is pulling in one direction and the family or medical personnel are pulling in the other, and so a person is suspended in limbo between heaven and earth, until and if someone recognizes the futility of the situation.  In fact, you can sign to that effect before major medical procedures, to let me die naturally with dignity.  If the brain and/or the heart or other vital organs simply stop working on their own, then by God, let God have me!  The Church does not require us to bankrupt the family to keep loved ones alive when nature has signaled that we should return to God.

II

These things being the case, then Jesus did not die with dignity.  In fact the scripture passages immediately leading up to the Feast of the Resurrection, events witnessed by the apostle John, indicate that there was very little dignity for Jesus in his last hours.  He was taken, mistreated, his backsides ripped apart with whips having sharpened shrapnel at the ends, made to suffer humiliation and dragged through the streets carrying the instrument of his torture, spikes driven into his flesh and left to die by asphyxiation.  Nothing could be farther from the dignity befitting a king.  They did not break his legs, the Scripture tells us.  This was a violent act to hasten the death of a person on a cross. When they came to Jesus they found that he was already dead so, as the apostle John witnessed again, an officer plunged a lance into his heart to make sure that he was dead and not simply in a coma.  Thus, without knowing it, the scriptural passage that says, not a  bone of his body would be broken, is thus fulfilled.

That was a brutal world with blood and gore and little respect for life, especially the lives of slaves and subjugated peoples. It is said that a recognized government has the right to issue the death penalty as a punishment for certain crimes.  But, in this case, the victim was clearly innocent, having rather suffered a travesty of justice.

But, Jesus never denies who he is. He never stoops to lying or denying the work he has been about.  He betrays no friends and never raises a hand to hurt someone else.  He never does anything to run away from the suffering others want to inflict – the supreme irony – of the whole Passion narrative.  Why does he submit while hardly opening up his mouth?  Why does Jesus allow himself to be treated this way?

III

A theme of victimization consequently runs through the Christian story – our story.  We are the doormats of the world. What we believe and stand for makes us the butt of jokes of late night TV shows and the subjects of ridicule and targets for the evil practices of the world.  Hints as to the reasons for this script for Christians can be taken from the passage of Isaiah the prophet – the first scripture text of Good Friday Service.  Faith does not really mitigate or dilute suffering.  Suffering and even death are not the last word for the believer. Suffering can take away sin in our religious experience.  Suffering can make up for a lot of things when it happens to come our way based on the sufferings of that first man, the God-Man, Jesus Christ.  We thus have rich new ground with which to interpret our own agonies in life.

Suffering can be redemptive.  Some of us are redeemers – saviors of some child, some spouse, saviors of some friend, some community or society or job, by what we suffer. The work of redemption continues in the bodily persons of us – Jesus’ disciples.

In midst of a dehumanizing passion, Jesus is the most humane person in this tragedy, not allowing himself to become the animal that others who want him dead have become.  Good Friday in the Church calendar year is the feast of death with dignity. But it is not the meaning that the Kevorkians of the world propose.  Jesus had the dignity to accept his suffering so that our suffering would be alleviated.  We Christians can understand this kind of suffering – vicarious suffering, suffering so that another might live; suffering so that our children might have the things they need and grow to be the men and women of faith and responsibility we so sorely desire of them.

Perhaps, it is not suffering itself that needs to be feared and avoided at all costs.  Some suffering is simply part of the human condition.  Some parts of it we provoke in our making life miserable for another.  Perhaps, what needs to be avoided is a death without dignity that pretends that suffering does not exist at all; a death without purpose.  Jesus’ death is a sign that no suffering is meaningless when Jesus walks with us.  No tears are wasted when Jesus walks with us.  No pain is unnoticed by God when it is the pain of a believer.

[stmargaret]

Passion Sunday – Telling the Story

Rev Helen gave this sermon on Passion Sunday 2024. Here it is for you again: We all love a good story, or at least I do which I have probably shared before. They start so far back, you have the myths and legends from the ancient times of the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Norse mythology. Then there are the fairy tales that we have passed down and those who told these stories 1,001 Arabian nights,…

[allsoulspriory]

Passion Sunday, the first day of Holy Week, and the Sunday before Easter, commemorates Jesus Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

Grant us true repentance, forgive our sins, and strengthen us by your Holy Spirit to amend our lives according to your holy word. Hear us, good Lord. Son of God, we ask you to hear us. Son of God, we ask you to hear us.

Amen

[dejahisashmom]

Palm Sunday | Meaning, Facts, Observances, & Significance | Britannica

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Palm-Sunday

[annapassione]

Buona domenica... 💋 ☕️

[resident-dumb-fuck]

every stephen sondheim musical ranked by number of ao3 hits it has

[lskamil27]

what a radiating smile!

[andillwriteyouatragedy]

gotta create the art you want to make. don't make what you think someone else wants. don't make what you think has mass appeal. don't make what you think will sell. don't make anything less than what you want to make. make EXACTLY what you want to make. make it from your soul. please don't stifle yourself! it's YOUR art! only YOU are possible of making it with YOUR ideas and YOUR visions and YOUR skills!! make YOUR authentic art!! we want to know what YOU specifically will make!! YOU!!!!!!

[persephoneflouwers]

Listen I don’t know how to articulate this in an eloquent way but remember that part in sunflower vol. 6 “I dont want to make you feel bad, but I've been trying hard not to talk to you”? It’s like he’s saying I’m trying to protect your solitude but it’s hard, first of all because it’s not something you just know. You have to learn how to create a space where two people in a relationship still feel like they’re their own person, if that makes any sense.

Secondly, because it is a contradiction, if you think about it. Being a couple, being in a couple automatically deletes your solitude state, unless you seek for it, unless you ask for it.

Third, it creates uncertainty when you’re young and in love and you have all these feelings inside your chest they might as well just explode out of your lungs, you want them, you want to be with them (let me inside, wish I could get to know you) and it doesn’t matter how many years have passed since you first got together. There will always be this perpetual urge of belonging to someone that pushes you to just be around each other all the time, to know what’s happening, to worry about them and to take care of them. It makes you paranoid and insecure to know they asked you to wait for when they’re ready to not be alone anymore. It takes a lot of patience and growth and trust to just let them be and live on their own, you know? It’s probably the most selfless act of them all, even when that’s not what you would want (my eyes want you more than a melody, I couldn’t want you any more/I don’t want to be alone in golden).

And I could go on and on and on about how well this concept fits his entire discography.

I could mention Satellite’s «You got a new life, Am I bothering you? Do you wanna talk? Spinning out, waiting for ya to pull me in. I can see you're lonely down there. Don't you know that I am right here?».

Or Daylight’s «you got me cursing the daylight»

Or Canyon Moon’s «I’ll be gone too long from you»

Do I have to mention Adore you? ALL OF IT? Alright, I will: «You don't have to say you love me. You don't have to say nothing You don't have to say you're mine, honey. I'd walk through fire for you, Just let me adore you»

In conclusion, loving him is the antidote, solitude included.

[Such a huge development from Sweet creature’s «I always think about you and how we don't speak enough» by the way]

[satinsheetsandsensualnights]

...🔥❤️

.

[stmargaret]

Passion Sunday 2024

Good morning and welcome to our service of holy communion for Passion Sunday, 17 March. Rev Sue will preside. We begin with the hymn “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy”: The service was livestreamed here: https://fb.watch/qSLLXqTTWX/ The readings were: Jeremiah 31:31-34 Hebrews 5:5-10 John 12:20-33 The anthem sung by the choir whilst communion was distributed was “Pilgrim Song” (Trad., arr.…

[leqclerc]

DANKE SEB! ❤️ ↳ a tribute to Sebastian Vettel’s illustrious Formula 1 career [2007 - 2022] We have to remember these days. There’s no guarantee that they will last forever. Enjoy them as long as they last.

[getting-used-to-different]

palm sunday yes, but also...

"table-flippin'-temple-cleansin' sunday" and "fig tree cursing sunday" are also acceptable