Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI, tells this story:  It is the story "of a family whose father was dying of cancer.  Big, tough, a welder, the man was not dying easily.  For months he hung on, long after there was any hope.  In intense pain, his body wasted away, the disease terminal, he still refused to die.  He lay clinging to life.  Each day his family spent their time with him.  One day, the oldest son sat by the bedside watching his dad suffering.  Overcome by the pain and hopelessness of it, he squeezed his dad's hand and said:  "Dad, die for God's sake!  Let go!  It's got to be better there than here."  Almost immediately, his dad became calm and within minutes he died.  The words his son spoke were paschal words, Christian words, words that trust God enough to be able to die in Him and know that new life and new spirit will be born in the dying.

Palm Sunday is the opening of Holy Week.  It is important to say something about the meaning of this climax to Lent and the celebration of the Paschal Mystery, the high point of our liturgical year.

The theme of this week and of Sunday's liturgy is clear.  What Jesus experiences for us is an image of God's unconditional love for each one of us.  By identifying ourselves with the 'mystery' of Jesus' suffering, death and resurrection we ourselves experience a great liberation, a 'Passover' from various forms of sin and enslavement to a life of joy and freedom.

Our celebration of Holy Week is not just to be one of remembrance, but of entering together with Jesus into a new experience of living. Theology of the Body offers an extensive biblical reflection on the meaning of marital love.  TOB is often reduced to a teaching on marriage.  It is that, but it is also so much more! It is critical to realize that TOB is not only for married people.  TOB provides a lens through which to view and understand the very meaning of existence.  Theology of the body is for everybody! 

Jesus' love for all was a mirror of His Father's love.  Jesus' love for us was Free, Total, Faithful, and Fruitful.  These are the vows a couple makes to each other at their wedding, i.e. to love each other as Jesus loves us.  But this way of loving as Jesus loves can be applied to all of us and in all walks of life.  When we love as Jesus loves we are living the Paschal Mystery in our own lives.

The Paschal Mystery means the living out in experience of the death and resurrection of Christ that we have been caught up into by Baptism.  It means living out in experience, throughout the whole course of our lives, this passage from sin and darkness to the light of God's love.  The Paschal Mystery is concerned with ultimate values and meanings, but it is lived in and through human encounters, relationships and circumstances.  It is the journey of Christ to the Father accepted and lived in faith. Within the context of human sexuality and marital love, TOB affords "the rediscovery of the meaning of the whole of existence, of the meaning of life" (TOB 46:6).

Understanding the true meaning of the body and sexuality "concerns the whole Bible" (TOB 69:8).  It plunges us into "the perspective of the whole Gospel, of the whole teaching, even more, of the whole mission of Christ" (TOB 49:3).

Each person experiences the death-resurrection of Christ at work in his life in a different way.  Each one of us is called to live this mystery personally in our own particular walk of life and in the culture of our times.  It is a never-ending experience; it can happen every day or many times in the course of a day.  In liturgy we make present and celebrate the paschal mystery, the dying and rising of Jesus.  This is probably fairly easy for most of us to accept.  Perhaps more challenging for us is that the Paschal Mystery is also how we must live every day - the dying and rising is the very pulse of our Christian living when we are being faithful followers of Jesus.

When we die to ourselves for the sake of another, so that they can experience "resurrection", i.e. new life and hope, we are loving with pure love (Agape).  This is how we live the Paschal Mystery in our daily lives.

In order to "resurrect" someone and "die" for him or her, there must be Pure Love.  The only atmosphere for growth, renewal or resurrection is sincere authentic love.  Love, if it is genuine, can renew or change a person.  Something in us must "die" if the power of our own lives is to transform the suffering and hopelessness of another.  This dying can be small surrenders that puts an end to our selfishness.  This Christian transaction has always exacted the same price.  In order to "resurrect" another we must first "die" to ourselves.

When we love others as Jesus loves us, FREE, TOTAL, FAITHFUL, and FRUITFUL, we are living the Paschal Mystery.