Catechesis Notes for the Week —Summer Stories from St. Luke: In Jesus Comes to Zacchaeus’s House we continue to see the call to repentance and the result of repentant faith in Zacchaeus giving back his stolen property.  In the Parable of the Minas (unit of weight) Jesus speaks about the gift of salvation in the Gospel that is to be put to use in repentant faith and faithful service in the Church and the Christian’s vocation until He comes again.  On Palm Sunday we see the beginning of the climax of Jesus’ work of salvation.  All things unfold according to God’s Word and plan of salvation in Christ.  Those who believe in Him rightly sing the Passover psalm to Him: “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!  Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”  He weeps over the impenitence of the people of Jerusalem, who did not realize the visitation of God’s salvation in Jesus, who called them away from reliance upon self to reliance upon the mercy of God that He came to bring.  Repentance and faith in Christ’s atoning sacrifice is the only thing that can give us peace with God.  The story of Israel’s pattern of impenitence and hardness of heart is described in the Parable of the Wicked Vinedressers.  Time and time again God sent them His prophets. Time and time again they rejected the call to repentance.  Finally, He sent them His Son—the only One who could make their peace with God—but they rejected Him and nailed Him to the cross.  Yet the irony of all of this is that the very act of their rejection in the crucifixion of Jesus became God’s instrument of salvation for a sinful world. As Holy Week begins, Jesus enters into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and is hailed as the Messiah. The opposition to His ministry begins in earnest by the chief priests, Sadducees, scribes, and Pharisees. Always looking for ways to trap Jesus in a contradiction, the Pharisees are the first to challenge Jesus.  Luke records that they “pretended to be righteous” but they could not catch Him in His words.  Should one be loyal to God or loyal to the government?  Jesus silenced them in His famous words: Render to Caesar the Things that Are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.  The Sadducees Question Jesus about the Resurrection because they did not believe in the resurrection or life after death, yet they claimed to be faithful to the Law of Moses.  Jesus used Moses’ words to counter them: “Now even Moses showed in the burning bush passage that the dead are raised, when he called the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ For He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”CP220807