FATHER JOHN KEEHNER The very heart and soul of who we are

YOUNGSTOWN -- Each year on Palm Sunday, the passion of the Lord is proclaimed aloud in our churches.
Each year, we listen attentively, as if hearing it for the first time. And each year I am amazed, even amid the sounds of crying babies, passing traffic and the rustle of waving palm branches and hymnals, at the awesome silence that envelopes the congregation as they listen to the words of the Gospel passage, taking part in its proclamation as if they were present at the events proclaimed.
Each year, after a long and arduous journey through Lent, we find ourselves, once again, on the rock of Calvary. We find ourselves ever more sharing in the suffering of Jesus as he endures the unendurable.
Each year we relive these events -- the last few days of the life of Jesus -- not as if we do not know the outcome but rather in solemn expectation of that outcome -- in expectation of the long awaited redemption that is the destiny of all who share in the mystery of the passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus through baptism.
The reason
The observance of these profound events is not a reenactment. Rather, it is a sharing in the experience of the Living Christ who suffered, died and rose for the salvation of the world. It is for this reason that, as Christians, we set aside Holy Week each year.
It is for this reason that we take time on Holy Thursday to celebrate, in the evening Mass of the Lord's Supper, the great gifts of the Eucharist and the Priesthood Christ gave his Church on the eve of his passion and death, commanding his disciples to follow his own example of service when he got down on his hands and knees to wash their feet.
It is for this reason that we take time on Good Friday to fast and not just to meditate on but even to glory in the Cross of Jesus Christ, "For he is our salvation, our life and our Resurrection; through him we are saved and made free" (The Roman Missal, 135).
It is for this reason that we take time in the darkness of Saturday night to wait in prayerful Vigil before the Resurrection of Christ is proclaimed and the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist are celebrated as living, concrete signs of God's love in the world.
For Holy Week, and especially the Sacred Triduum, which begins with the Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper and lasts until Easter Sunday night, is the very source and summit of our Church year.
It is a celebration, in essence, of the very heart and soul of who we are as Christians, of who we are as a people created in the image and likeness of God. It is a celebration of those beliefs that are so basic and yet so difficult to hold onto in an age of cynicism and indifference -- the beliefs that good really is stronger than evil, that love really is stronger than hatred, that life really is stronger than death.
This is the core of the faith we profess as Christians, that in his love for us, God emptied himself of his divinity, taking on our weakness, experiencing even our human death, in order that we may rise with him and share in his life for eternity.
XFather Keehner is vice rector of St. Columba Cathedral and director of The Newman Center at Youngstown State University.