Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion Readings

Reflection on Scripture

On Palm Sunday, a great crowd gathered to praise Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem for what would be His final visit. The people gathered, not so much in praise of the Son of God, but rather they were looking for favor from God or what would be classified as the consolations of God. Their hearts were not ready to encounter the Lord in a personal life-saving encounter and because of their blindness to the truth, they would not experience the God of love. How many walked away that day disappointed? The people gathered were looking for earthly changes and a restoration of the kingdom to greatness. In their ignorance and lack of understanding, they were offered the gift of salvation and eternal life, and they passed on the greatest gift ever given and sought the trinkets of our earthly dwelling for a few moments of pleasure.

This week begins the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Churches will have a higher attendance, as people gather to collect their palms, place palm crosses on gravesites, and generally fulfill their internal obligation of going to church on Palm Sunday out of superstition and human tradition that rewards their efforts with good health and prosperity for another year. The Jewish people did this on Palm Sunday, but they did not have Jesus Christ crucified and risen and they had not received the Holy Spirit to enflame their hearts and give them the gift of wisdom. We have these gifts.

Palm Sunday begins a time when we willingly enter into the passion of Jesus, embrace Him in His suffering, pick up our crosses and follow Him sharing in His suffering, and take responsibility for our own sinfulness and the sinfulness of humankind. And we do this because if we can embrace Jesus in His suffering, He will embrace us with His glory. If we only see the glorified Jesus and turn away from the ugliness of sin and death, then we can never share in His glory.

We can shout “Hosanna in the highest” as the Jewish people did, but we can do this only after we seek forgiveness for our sins, do penance for reparation for the harm our sins did to us and to others, and with the grace of God sin no more.

As we enter the Easter triduum, we are called to be participants and not onlookers or non-committed bystanders. On Holy Thursday we celebrate the Lord’s passion and His real presence in the form of bread and wine. We gather as a body, a body that was borne from the wound

in Jesus’s side where blood and water flowed creating His Church. We are recreated in this most holy sacrament, and we go forth to wash the feet of our brothers and sisters, because we are the lesser of those called to the kingdom of God.

On Good Friday, we celebrate the Lord’s passion and death when He allowed Himself to suffer and die by the hands of those, He called into existence out of love. We are asked on Good Friday to embrace His cross, to unite our sufferings to His for the salvation of all, and to follow Him unreservedly into eternal life with the same love which called us into existence.

This week we are again called to discipleship, and we are asked to bare in ourselves the very wounds of Jesus. Discipleship is not easy, but the rewards are beyond extraordinary but we must ask for the grace to want to embrace Him in His suffering so, He can embrace us in His glory.