BRIDGEPORT— “What are we truly looking for in our lives? ” Bishop Frank J. Caggiano asked to begin his homily after the reading of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ on Palm Sunday at St. Augustine Cathedral.
(Read / watch the full homily here)
“We know the answer the crowd gave,” the bishop said to those who gathered with him for the 8:30 a.m. Mass on a sunny and brisk morning. “They were looking for a military king who could dislodge the Roman subjugation.”
The bishop said when Christ entered Jerusalem to a triumphant welcome, he was offering a very different kind of kingdom based on love, vulnerability and self-sacrifice, and that those who at first hailed Christ as a liberating king turned on him “because he came for a very different purpose.”
“The crowd went from adulation to calls to crucify him in five days. Even the Apostles began to doubt,” the bishop said. “His throne was made of wood, the jewels were the nails that held him.”
He said that Peter denied that he knew Jesus three times and Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, “the cost of a single slave in the Roman empire.”
The bishop urged the faithful “to have the courage to walk with Jesus, and to love those the world would say are not worth loving—the sick, the afflicted, the immigrant, the poor, the incarcerated.”
The beautiful Palm Sunday liturgy included two gospel readings, the first in the cathedral’s narthex with the blessing of the palms and the entrance procession, which recalls Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, (Matthew 21: 1-11), “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest.”
The second gospel is the Passion of the Lord, ( Matthew: 26 14-27: 66), “This night all of you will have your faith in me shaken, for it is written: “I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be dispersed.”
For the Passion narrative Bishop Caggiano was joined by Deacon William Santulli, Vice Chancellor of the Diocese, and Deacon Rich Scinto of St. Rose of Lima Parish, who served as voices and narrator for the extended reading.
The faithful in the pews also read the lines of the crowd, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. So he is the king of Israel! Let him come down from the cross now and we will believe in him.”
The bishop concluded his homily by asking once again, “What are you looking for? Where do we find the peace and courage to face the inevitable suffering of those we truly love and can’t help anymore?”
He said only the Kingdom of God can give us hope, peace and joy and bring us to everlasting life.
“No king, government or society can do that. Let us follow the lord, let us to go and see.”
