So Sweet

   Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord   C 

Readings

The Abenaki—

a native people of Quebec and New England—

have a wonderful legend about the origins of maple syrup. 

When the world was new—the story goes—

the Creator made life very easy for people:

game was abundant, the weather was always good,

and maple tress were filled with thick, sweet syrup—

all anyone had to do was snap off a twig

and collect the rich syrup that flowed out.

But it wasn’t long before trouble developed. 

People stopped fishing in the streams and hunting in the forest. 

They stopped working the fields and collecting berries. 

The village was abandoned and fires had grown cold. 

Where had they gone? 

They were out lying on their backs in a stand of maple trees

as syrup dripped directly into their mouths! 

The people had grown so fat and lazy they could barely move—

and were so content, they didn’t want to.

When this state of affairs 

was reported to the Great Spirit,

it was decided that changes must be made. 

The Creator had his servant 

take a large birch bark bucket,

draw water from the river, 

and pour it into the maple trees—

pouring more and more water

until the sap was no longer so thick or so sweet. 

The people began to get up and started asking,

“Where has our sweet drink gone?” 

Which is when they learned

that if they wanted their maple syrup again,

it would require hard work:

the sap would only flow sweet 

for a short time in the spring,

buckets would have to be made 

in which to collect it,

and much wood gathered to build fires 

to boil it for a long while. 

And so the people would be reminded

of the earlier error of their ways

and how to honor the gifts of the Creator. 

A slightly different take

on the “forbidden fruit” of Paradise, isn’t it? 

True confession:

I’d have been much more tempted

by maple syrup than an apple…

The maple sugaring season is one rich with traditions

and charged with memory for the people of the North Country. 

And I can’t help but wonder if,

in the great designs of God’s providence,

there are spiritual lessons intended for us

in the way it coincides with Lent, Holy Week, and Easter.

Making maple syrup is a slow, gradual process

that involves much labor,

whether you do it the old-fashioned way

or take advantage of modern technologies:

trees must be tapped, sap must be collected,

then it must be boiled with careful attention—

all after patently waiting for just the right conditions. 

But all this effort results

in a mysterious and beautiful transformation:

impurities are removed, flavor is condensed,

and a most delicious, natural sweetness emerges.

These coming days bring us together

around a tree even sweeter than the maple:

the sacred wood of the Cross. 

The transformation it brings is hard won;

no greater labor has ever been witnessed on the face of the earth—

the perfect work of one who is both God and man. 

The change it brings is one heated by flame:

the relentless, purifying fire of divine love. 

As the French Carmelite mystic

and soon-to-be-saint, Elizabeth of Trinity, remarked,

“There is no wood like that of the Cross

for lighting the fire of love in the soul.”  

And the point of all this labor and burning

is to bring out a natural sweetness:

to restore the life and likeness of God within you and me

that was ours before the fall.

Maple sugaring requires warm days and cold nights—

and those who are expert in the process

know well how to watch for the signs of the perfect conditions. 

Do we require signs that now is the time—

that the day of our salvation is upon us? 

Just look at Peter,

to whom the Lord turned and looked,

not with contempt but compassion,

and see the three-fold denier converted

into the first Pope of a Church whose mission is one of mercy. 

Just look at Pilate and Herod—

political figures not exactly known for their integrity—

and see how simply being near the crucified Messiah

turned these enemies into friends.  

Just look at the condemned criminal

who asks Jesus for a remembrance in his kingdom,

and witness one rightly sentenced to death

become the only saint canonized by Christ himself.

Maybe next year,

instead of importing palm branches from some tropical locale,

we ought to wave twigs from our native sugar maples

to welcome this most holy of weeks—

this week during which,

by a mysterious and beautiful transformation,

Christ restores to us the rich delights of Paradise.

All glory and praise to you, Father and Creator of all,

who has caused forgiveness and life to flow

with such abundant sweetness
from the tree of the Cross!