The celebration we share today is very, very ancient, the gathering of palms, remembering Jesus in this way. Actually 107 years ago, in 1884, we found a document that was a travel diary. And we know the woman who wrote it. We know her name was Agraggia. We know that she was wealthy. We know that she knew the Bible real well, and belonged to kind of a community of pious women, and that she took a chunk of her life traveling around Syria and Egypt and the Holy Land; and she did this and she wrote this 1600 years ago. And 1600 years ago, she arrived in Jerusalem just in time for Palm Sunday, and they were doing exactly what we are doing today. She describes them cutting down branches, waving them, singing, celebrating and remembering the first entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, and the beginning of the week our Christian ancestors have called "Holy Week." Such a special time!

I looked up what the experts say about it, and one expert says, "This is the week of telling Christ's story again and having it come true in ourselves and in our community." That's pretty powerful. Another expert says this. (I like this one.) "This week is set aside to celebrate who we have become." Hmm!... It's impressive. You can be sure that this weekend, at least 30 million or more Roman Catholics go to church to celebrate Palm Sunday.

But don't get too smug about it, because we took a little survey about four years ago, across the United States, among Catholics. First question was, "What is the significance of Christmas and Easter?" And the most common answer was, "It's a time for families to get together." Now that's not bad.... but that ain't it! And the young people were asked what the meaning of Easter was and what Easter was all about. Here are their three top answers. Number one, "It's the celebration of spring." Number two, "It's the time for a school break." And you all know Number three, "Easter Bunny!" Number three is the Easter Bunny! And then, families were asked, "How do you spend Holy Week?" And there were a lot of different answers, but THE most frequent answer, here it is. THE most frequent answer was, "Disneyland!" It came in Number One.

We are a generation of replacing things. We've replaced the Catholic Shrines, such as Lourdes, with Graceland and Las Vegas. We've replaced relics with trinkets from Disneyland. We've replaced, in our popular imagination, the saints with sports figures and Hollywood celebrities. And, maybe best of all, we've replaced going to Confession to a priest with conversations with talk show hosts. But, you know, even Catholic shrines and Catholic saints are very much out of place during this week, so much so, that for centuries, the Church has said, "If you've got any Catholic saints and shrines and statues in your Church, during this time of year, sack 'em. Put a cover over them, or, as they do at Christ the King in Pleasant Hill, remove them from Church entirely. Because that's not what this week is about!"

This is the week to celebrate who we have become because of the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus. Well, who have we become? You might want to look around, and see what we look like. We're quite a mix. But we're a mix, not just as a group, but each of us individually, every one of us. Look inside ourselves.

Every one of us, we find inside ourselves, Palm Sunday, because we are followers of Jesus. We're attracted to Jesus. We cheer Jesus. It might be because of His values, or because of His message, or because of a personal relationship with Jesus, or because of an awesome religious experience along the way. But we're among the Palm Sunday Disciples, who are attracted to and cheer Jesus.

But look again within ourselves, and we are also the Holy Thursday Disciples of the Last Supper because along the way we have been nourished, one way or another, we have been nourished by the memory and the Real Presence of Jesus.

Now, look again.... and you'll find that we are also the Good Friday Disciples.... you know, the ones who ran away, the ones who let Him die? There are plenty of hours and plenty of days and plenty of times in our lives where we really desert Jesus, where we forget about Him entirely, every one of us.

And look one more time, and you'll find the Disciples of Early Easter Sunday Morning. You know what they were like. They had heard from the women that Jesus was risen and they had heard that the tomb was empty, and they remained unconvinced. It was just too much to believe! And sometimes, we're like that too. We've heard about it, but it's a little too much to believe.

And, finally, we're like the Disciples of the Risen Jesus, who go forth to talk about Him and celebrate Him, who receive new life for Him because, because of Jesus and the God Jesus tells us about, it changes our attitudes. It changes our behavior. It changes our energy level. It gives us new life. We're quite a mix! That's who we celebrate here in Holy Week, who we've become because of Jesus.

There's a great line in that first reading. At least, it was a great line the first time I heard it. Then I thought about it. The line was, "Speak to the weary a word that will rouse them." ....I get weary once in awhile. I don't know about anyone else. (Let me find out. "How many here have ever gotten weary?" ...Well, how about the people who NEVER got weary? It looks as if more than sixty percent of you never got weary in your whole life. Will you raise your hand? I want to meet you! I want to talk to you! Tell me how you do it! Oh, my goodness!!) I liked it when I first heard it, "Speak to the weary a word that will rouse them." And then I said, "I don't want to be roused. I'd rather not be roused." I would rather, "Speak to me a word that gives comfort. Speak to me a word that gives peace. Speak to me a word that gives hope." Or, "Speak to me a word that leaves me alone." But "rousing!" It reminds me that Princess Diana had a plaque on her desk she kept all the time that read, "You can't comfort the afflicted without afflicting the comfortable." And that's what Holy Week does. It "rouses" us. The values of Jesus, the challenge of the Gospel and the deep abiding love of God that we see in Holy Week rouses us and, if we are comfortable, it afflicts us. And, if we're afflicted, it brings us comfort.

So we set aside this week to celebrate who we have become, full of contradictions, weary at times, distracted much of the time, but always holding onto the Jesus Story, and trying our best to be Jesus People. May this be a week where we focus both on the journey of Jesus and on our own personal journey, and what really matters, what's really important. May we fix our eyes on your hills, Jerusalem our destiny. We must set our hearts for the way. The journey itself is our destiny. But no one walks alone. This journey makes us all one. Amen.