Pope Leo’s Palm Sunday Homily on God, Jesus the Messiah, Violence and War.

Friends,

I am fairly sure by now you have heard or read excerpts from the magnificent Palm Sunday homily by Pope Leo for the year AD 2026, or for any year.  But, you should reflect on his entire text. It contains much more that a few press headlines can communicate. Below  are two  official copies of Leo’s homily from the Vatican Press Office. One is a clean copy. The other has

emphasis-designations by me to help a bit, perhaps, in recognizing the import of certain words and phrases. I am sure there is not a word in Leo’s page and a half homily that was not chosen with the utmost sense of spiritual and moral thoughtfulness, studiousness, gravity and prayer.

Do ponder it in terms of what your witness to the world must be in thought, word and deed as a Catholic Christian.in light of it. And, ask in Christlike love, your neighbor, your enemy, your priest and your Bishop what they think their witness should be in thought, word and deed in light of it in whatever part of the world they occupy as Catholic Christians?

A caveat: If those who rule the world by violence and war, and those who manufacture the instruments of human destruction used in war and who profit from their manufacture on a grand scale, can persuade the average Catholic today to believe that when Jesus  commanded  His disciples to “Love your enemies ” as He had loved His enemies, that He did not exclude slitting the enemies’ throats or burning off the enemies’ faces, then you can be sure they will not give Pope Leo’s Palm Sunday homily a free ride into the hearts of 1.5 billion Catholics. The boys in the back rooms of the government and corporate PR offices  whose task is comparable to Winston Smith in 1984, will have Catholics believing that what Pope Leo said “was nothing really new,” and they will pay the best and the brightest from Catholic academia and from the  Washington think-tanks world to  write in Catholic newspapers and journals why what Pope Leo said “changes nothing.” Nonsense!

Don’t fall for the “nothing changed” sound bites with which the highly paid mass media pundits will saturate news commentaries. What Pope Leo said represents a tectonic disruption of the firm ground on which Catholic and  Christian justification of war and for justification for participation in war have stood since the Fifth Century AD. But, Pope Leo grounded his “tectonic disruption” in truth as ancient as the Book of Isaiah’s (Is 42:1-53:12) Hymn of  “ebed Yahweh“, which is the identity and mission God communicated to Jesus at His baptism by John, when He arises from below the water. What the everyday Catholic, child or adult, normally receives as his or her catechesis today and for many yesterdays regarding war will need to be revamped and what the Catholic military chaplaincy places in the minds of Catholic military personnel regarding war, God, Jesus and morally acceptable Catholic interpretations of Scripture, must also be overhauled to bring them into conformity with the essence of Catholic teaching on war,  as unambiguously proclaimed by Pope Leo in his Palm Sunday Mass  homily, broadcast, worldwide from from St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

Do afford it the level of attention it deserves in light of the fact that it is a profound and unequivocal communication on how to glorify the One true God who is love and how to save the souls of all human beings by following the Will and Way of God who is love as revealed by Jesus, the Divinely chosen  “ebed Yahweh” Messiah, the King of Peace.

Is there not something radically irrational in choosing to follow and obey the king of a totally perishable nation that comes and goes, after various sojourns into deceit, violence and war, as quickly and as completely aa a snowflake, when the option is there to choose to follow Jesus, the Eternal King of Peace to the safe harbor of Eternal Life and Communion with God?

Ask yourself: Does this homily speak the truth that Jesus spoke? If it does, what for me as a person given the gift of Faith in Jesus as the “ebed Yahweh”  Messiah, the Incarnation of God, etc. is the purpose of this gift for the time that remains for my life in time?

-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy