John 12:12-18 12 The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. 13 They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna! ” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”“Blessed is the king of Israel!” 14 Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written: 15 “Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.” 16 At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him. 17 Now the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. 18 Many people, because they had heard that he had performed this sign, went out to meet him.
12The next day, the news that Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem swept through the city. A large crowd of Passover visitors 13took palm branches and went down the road to meet him. They shouted,
“Praise God! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hail to the King of Israel!”
14Jesus found a young donkey and rode on it, fulfilling the prophecy that said:
15“Don’t be afraid, people of Jerusalem. Look, your King is coming, riding on a donkey’s colt.”
16His disciples didn’t understand at the time that this was a fulfillment of prophecy. But after Jesus entered into his glory, they remembered what had happened and realized that these things had been written about him.
17Many in the crowd had seen Jesus call Lazarus from the tomb, raising him from the dead, and they were telling others about it. 18That was the reason so many went out to meet him—because they had heard about this miraculous sign. 19Then the Pharisees said to each other, “There’s nothing we can do. Look, everyone has gone after him!” (NLT)
“Christ became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name.”
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…
All jokes aside, let us remember Egypt, where ISIS bombings killed dozens of Christians worshiping on Palm Sunday. We pray for the living, that God may grant them strength and courage. We pray for the dead, that their souls will receive mercy and rest in peace.
God our Father, You gave St Anthony of Egypt the courage and belief of an apostle to give up his wealth, living a life of poverty and solitude, and to found monasteries. Help us to be zealous in imitating his virtues and to follow in the footsteps of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Grant this through the same Christ Our Lord who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
At every Mass, day after day, we stand at the foot of the Cross, for we gather around the Altar which is Calvary and the Mass is nothing less than the Sacrifice of the Cross made present once more for us, here and now, Sacramentally, in an un-bloody manner. With the devotion of Our Lady, the piety of St Mary Magdalene, or the friendship of St John, in every Mass, we gather at the foot of the Cross. But at Calvary there were also those who were merely curious, those who were bored and disinterested, the confused and uncertain, as well as the rich, the poor, the powerful and the dispossessed. In other words, all of humanity, in our complexity, was gathered at the foot of the Cross. And it is the same today also at every Mass.
And all who are gathered here are loved from all eternity by God, and all who come – and even those who don’t – have been foreseen by the Lord Jesus when he freely offered himself up on the Cross for them, for us. Christ on the Cross is a living Sacrifice of love, offered up for us sinners, in order to reconcile to the Father all of humanity who has been estranged from God because of sin.
Christ our God assumed the condition of a slave, sharing in our human weaknesses even to the point of death. And then he even freely chose to die, not just any death, but in humiliation and agony, mocked and tortured upon the Cross; the innocent Victim of the world’s violence and inhumanity. In these past weeks, in Ukraine, the media has reminded us once more of the tragic horror of Man’s inhumanity to man.
But such anguish and trauma, in big and small ways, continue to happen in other places of the world, and even in our own borough, and perhaps even in our own homes. These prosaic inhumanities, though, are often unnoticed or forgotten by the media, and so they can also be overlooked by us. However God sees, and God remembers, and indeed, in Christ Jesus, God suffers alongside the voiceless. And then, as to the good thief, he promises them who call out to him a share in his glory, a place in his paradise.
Each of us, again, who come to the Mass today, and time and again, stand on Calvary with Christ. Some of us are crucified with Christ, sharing in his sufferings, perhaps through the anguish and grief that confronts us daily, or in the sorrows that we endure, even to the point of illness and death. To each of them, Christ promises a place in paradise. As St Paul says: “If we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him” (2 Tim 2:11f)
So, when we hear again the drama of Christ’s Passion and Death; when we enact again in a small way, the triumphant entry into Jerusalem with the waving of palms, and then we recall the fickleness of the crowd who days later turn against him and cruelly call for his bloody execution, let us remember this: Christ suffered and died for us, alongside us. But this is no mere act of compassion. Rather, as St Paul says, from this depth God raised Christ up and exalted him in the heavens. Thus God overcomes death and destroys its final hold over Mankind. This is the reason Christ endured the Cross and the Burial so that we, even though we shall also die and be buried one day, shall also have the promise and hope of rising with Christ. All this – Calvary, the Mass, the gift of the Sacraments – Christ has done and is still doing for you and for me because he loves us; he does all this so that we can reign with him eternally, so that we can enjoy friendship with him in paradise. So, day after day, Christ offers himself to the Father for us, and he pours out his grace upon us, to draw us closer to himself in love.
So, let us cry out with hope, “Hosanna!” which means, Lord, save me! And so let us now turn towards God and go up to the holy Altar of God, to Calvary, with thanksgiving and gratitude. So, let us sing with joy, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
Today is Palm Sunday, so here’s a bit of history about it !
Palm Sunday is a Christian feast falling on the Sunday before Easter that commemorates Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, an event mentioned in each of the four canonical Gospels. Palm Sunday marks the first day of Holy Week, the last week before Easter.
In most liturgical churches Palm Sunday is celebrated by the blessing and distribution of palm branches or the branches of other native trees representing the palm branches the crowd scattered in front of Christ as he rode into Jerusalem.
The difficulty of procuring palms in unfavorable climates led to their substitution with branches of native trees, including box, olive, willow, and yew. The Sunday was often named after these substitute trees, as in Yew Sunday, or by the general term Branch Sunday.
For example in France, we use the branches of a very common plant called “buis” and call it “le Dimanche des Rameaux”, rameau being kind of a generic term for branch, but not often used outside of this religious context.
Christians take these palms, which are often blessed by clergy, to their homes where they hang them alongside Christian art (especially crosses and crucifixes) or keep them in their Bibles or devotionals.
For example, here’s something you could find in a Christian home in France:
The year after, in the period preceding the start of Lent, churches collect these palms, which are then ritually burned on Shrove Tuesday to make the ashes to be used on the following day, Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.
Celebrating Phylicia Rashad and Debbie Allen on #NationalSiblingsDay (LISTEN)
by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson) On #NationalSiblingsDay, we celebrate Tony and Emmy award-winning sisters Phylicia Rashad and Debbie Allen in today’s GBN Daily Drop podcast. To read about them, read on. To hear about them, press PLAY:
As we pray and meditate on Christ’s prophetic passing and resurrection during this Holy Week. May our Almighty Father the Everliving God bless, heal, protect, guide, and fill us with His Holy Spirit, now and forever more.
Today is Palm Sunday, which marks Jesus’s Triumphal Entry into the Holy City of Jerusalem. It also begins Holy Week, which culminates in Christ’s death on the cross and then Resurrection from the dead.
