{"id":3283,"date":"2006-04-09T08:42:01","date_gmt":"2006-04-09T08:42:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/passion-sunday.html"},"modified":"2006-04-09T08:42:01","modified_gmt":"2006-04-09T08:42:01","slug":"passion-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/passion-sunday.html","title":{"rendered":"Passion Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Cross, a sign of contradiction and of life, was at the heart of the pope\u2019s homily, given after the dramatic account of the Passion by the evangelist Mark. Benedict XVI said: \u201cThere was a time, and it is still not entirely over, when Christianity was rejected precisely because of the Cross. The Cross talked about sacrifice, it was said, the Cross is a sign of denial of life. We, on the other hand, want life without restrictions and without renunciation. We want to live, nothing more than to live. Don\u2019t let\u2019s be limited by precepts and bans: we want richness and fullness \u2013 this is what was said and is still being said. All this sounds convincing and seductive, it is the language of the serpent, who tells us: \u2018Don\u2019t let yourselves be afraid! Eat serenely from all the trees in the garden!\u2019 Palm Sunday, however, tells us that the truly great \u2018Yes\u2019 is precisely the Cross, that the Cross is the true tree of life. We are not alive to become masters of life, but to give it. Love is a giving of self, and this is why it is the way of true life, symbolized by the Cross.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cross is \u201cthe road\u201d, the \u201cway\u201d along which Jesus wants to lead us, a royal way at odds with the mentality of the world. Meditating on the episode of the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, astride a donkey, Benedict XVI said: \u201cJesus entered the Holy City riding a donkey, that is, the animal of simple peasants, and what\u2019s more, a donkey that did not belong to him, but one He borrowed for the occasion. He does not turn up in an opulent, royal carriage, or astride a horse, like the world\u2019s great men, but on a borrowed donkey.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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The Cross, a sign of contradiction and of life, was at the heart of the pope\u2019s homily, given after the dramatic account of the Passion by the evangelist Mark. Benedict XVI said: \u201cThere was a time, and it is still not entirely over, when Christianity was rejected precisely because of the Cross. The Cross talked…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nPassion Sunday - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/passion-sunday.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Passion Sunday - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Cross, a sign of contradiction and of life, was at the heart of the pope\u2019s homily, given after the dramatic account of the Passion by the evangelist Mark. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}