{"id":4804,"date":"2021-03-28T21:44:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-28T21:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/?p=4804"},"modified":"2022-10-06T21:18:02","modified_gmt":"2022-10-06T21:18:02","slug":"holy-week-top-of-the-charts-to-lethal-fiasco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/holy-week-top-of-the-charts-to-lethal-fiasco\/","title":{"rendered":"Holy Week: Top of the Charts to Lethal Fiasco"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s the start of Holy Week, almost the end of Lent.<\/p>\n

And it’s the 219th anniversary of Heinrich Wilhelm Matth\u00e4us Olbers spotting 2 Pallas, an asteroid. But that’s not what I’m talking about today.<\/p>\n

Today’s Palm Sunday. That’s when we remember our Lord’s entering Jerusalem in the first century equivalent of a ticker tape parade.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\"Ecce<\/a>Jesus was top of the charts, wildly popular.<\/p>\n

Grass roots opinion, apparently, was that they finally had their messianic king.<\/p>\n

Jesus looked like someone who’d finally end the Roman occupation.<\/p>\n

The powers that be had the same idea, which scared them.<\/p>\n

If this Jesus person, they figured, says ‘I’m the king,’ then we’ll be out of a job. After that, the Roman governor will send in troops and we’ll lose everything else.<\/p>\n

So they arrested Jesus, tried and convicted him in a kangaroo court and pressured the Roman governor to enforce the death penalty.<\/p>\n

\"Jesus:<\/a>Then after a really bad night, our Lord was nailed to a cross and died.<\/p>\n

One Apostle committed suicide.<\/p>\n

The rest were keeping a low profile.<\/p>\n

Assuming that our Lord was the national hero folks had been expecting, that first Holy Week and Good Friday ended in a fiasco.<\/p>\n

Two millennia later, we’re still celebrating. That sounds crazy, at best.<\/p>\n

But it’s not.<\/p>\n

A few days after his messy death, Jesus stopped being dead. And that’s another topic.<\/p>\n