We begin the holiest week of our liturgical year on Sunday by celebrating Palm Sunday.

As it did 2,000 years ago, Palm Sunday began the chain of events that changed the world. The plan of God to rescue each one of us from the sin of Adam and Eve, and from our own sin, was about to be fulfilled in Jesus.

It is one of the great deficiencies of modern faith that many do not take to heart the reality of the human situation recorded for us in the Bible and in faith. In the beginning, God made the world good. He made our first parents to be in total harmony with Him, with each other and with creation.

However, because God wished this harmony to be one of love, He left Adam and Eve free to choose. It is the nature of love that it must be given freely.

When they chose against Him, the damage of sin introduced to the world for the first time the death that we will all face.

In this state, the human race was condemned to eternal death, not life with God.

Think of the darkness, the sadness and the pessimism of each day under that just sentence. We get a sense of that despair in our modern society, so convinced that science and the unfolding of history will somehow bring the human race to its longed for culmination or perfection.

Without God, the reign of sin continues to bring us war, oppression of the weak and poor, broken families and a society that is in constant doubt about good and evil, right and wrong.

The entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem began the week that finally brought hope to that despair.

The Son of God, after 30 years of quiet life and three years of His own prayer and teaching, was now prepared to reoffer the human race to His Father.

We should be struck by the contrast between Jesus on that first Palm Sunday and our contemporary values. He is God among us, yet He exuded a simplicity and poverty that eschewed the riches of the world.

He rode slowly on a lowly animal, even as for one of the final times.His presence reminded the cheering crowds to seek God and live what is truly good.

Later in Holy Week, celebrated by the Church during the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday night, Jesus gathered for a final time with the Apostles, the first priests. He entrusted to them His very self, His Body and Blood, celebrating the first Mass.

Shortly thereafter, for the world, but truly for each of us, Jesus went to His agony and prayer in the garden, His scourging and mocking, and ultimately His freely offered death on the cross.

“Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.”

By His own forgiveness of us and His love for the Father, Holy Week gave us once more the chance for eternal life in the happiness of God for which we have been created.

We all live marked by the history and reality of sin. Life for each of us brings the same “fork in the road” that it did for Adam and Eve. Will we choose for Christ? Will we love the Lord our God with all our mind, all our heart and all our soul? Or will we give ourselves to something else?

Please, make this Holy Week to be a moment of faith, a moment of conversion.

Attend Mass not only on Palm Sunday as we must, but make the time to partake in the Mass of Holy Thursday night and the veneration of Jesus’ cross on Friday.

Use those moments to walk with our Lord, to open your conscience and soul to Him and to pray for yourself, your family and for all who need prayers.

Parents, bring your children. Young people, ask your parents to come with you.

The reminder of our sin and of Jesus’ sufferings during Holy Week is both good and necessary. It recalls to us why Christ suffered and died as He did. And it sets the stage for the final victory, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

There is a good reason that we call this, “Holy Week.”