Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

Palm Sunday begins the Christian High Holy Days, seven days of awe, prayer, reflection, and remembering. Holy Week is our yearly spiritual pilgrimage when we experience the events we commemorate and remember. We’re not to be distracted from this week’s events, so we cover the statues in the church to help us focus on the one thing that’s important: the Paschal Mystery. I encourage you to gather with the community this year to experience, as our Jewish brothers and sisters would describe them, the Days of Awe.

Holy Week is a spiritual drama that begins on Palm Sunday and concludes with the Great Vigil of Easter. Today, we listen to two Gospel passages. At the very beginning of Mass, we remember Jesus’ spectacular entrance into the city of Jerusalem. We become the vast crowd as we gather outside the church or in the vestibule. We carry the same palm branches the people carried that day and walk in procession into the church, symbolically Jerusalem. We sing with the people, “All glory laud and honor to you redeemer king.”

But a shadow quickly comes over this short celebration. We listen to the prayer of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting. The Lord is my help; therefore, I shall not be disgraced.

With Isaiah’s words still in our ears, we read the Passion. On Holy Thursday we eat with Jesus at his last supper. On Good Friday we join him in the garden of olives. We witness his arrest and trial and walk with him to the cross. Palm Sunday sets us on the road we’ll travel for six days. We’ll move from triumph to suffering and death. For the next six day’s we’ll enter the Paschal Mystery.

Let Us Pray:

Lord, by your cross and resurrection, you have set us free. You are the savior of the world.