Entering the Procession with Christ, Palm Sunday (B), March 24, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Palm Sunday, Year B
March 24, 2024
Mk 11:1-10, Is 50:4-7, Ps 22, Phil 2:6-11, Mk 14:1-15:47

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• In the two Gospels that the Church ponders on Palm Sunday, the passage at the beginning of Mass that details Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the solemn reading just completed of Christ’s Passion and the way of the Cross that led him out of the holy city, there is a focus on two different, contrasting, but nevertheless interconnected, processions. Joining those processions is the journey of Palm Sunday, of Holy Week, and of the Christian life. Both processions involve preparation, assistance, branches, and exclamations. Together let us briefly these elements so that we may better accompany Christ today, this week and beyond.
• First, Christ prepares for each journey and wants us to imitate his preparation. When Jesus and the disciples drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, he told two of his disciples, “Go into the village opposite you, and immediately upon entering it, you will find a colt tethered on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone should say, ‘Why are doing this?, reply, ‘The Master has need of it and will send it back here at once.’ So they went off and found a colt tethered at a gate outside on the street and they untied it. Some of the bystanders said to them, ‘What are you doing, untying the colt?’ The disciples answered the bystanders just as Jesus had told them to, and the bystanders permitted them to do it. So the disciples brought the colt to Jesus.” Similarly, in the Passion, Jesus again said to two of his disciples, “Go into the city and a man will meet you, carrying a jar of water. Follow him. Wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, “Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples.” Then he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready. Make the preparations for us there.’ The disciples then went off, entered the city, and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.”
• In each passage, we behold Jesus’ preparation. He was ready. He was eager. He was meticulous. He was in charge. In Isaiah’s prophecy that we heard in the first reading, the Suffering Servant said, “I have set my face like flint, knowing that I will not be put to shame,” meaning that he had fixed his face as solidly as that hard, dark quartz on what he was to accomplish and he would not be deterred. We also see how much he wanted to include the efforts of his disciples working together. Both lessons teach us a lot about Palm Sunday, Holy Week and the Christian life. Jesus’ detailed immediate preparation for these culminating scenes in his earthly life are just a glimpse of his remote preparation across the centuries — indeed from the time of the Fall, or some theologians would say, because God is eternal, from before the foundation of the world — for the redemption he would accomplish during that first Holy Week. Jesus similarly wants us to be prepared. To be conscious of what we’re doing. To choose to make the time. To get ready and eager for what we are doing. Sometimes there is the temptation for Catholics during Holy Week just to wing it, to show up unprepared, to play spiritual “Simon says” and go with the flow, to be led by others, or to remain as bystanders. That obviously is what would characterize many in the crowd on Palm Sunday and the mob in Pilate’s courtyard and along the way of the Cross on Good Friday. To follow Christ, however, to receive all that he won for us and desires to give us this week, we must be prepared. All of Lent has been to prime us for these moments. Our whole Christian life has been the remote preparation. As St. Paul reminded us on Ash Wednesday, “Now is the acceptable time. Now is the day of salvation!” Second, it’s not enough just to prepare individually; Christ wants us to prepare together. He could have easily sent one faithful disciple to commandeer the colt or make ready the Upper Room, but he sent two, just like he had previously sent out the 12 apostles and the 72 disciples two-by-two to proclaim the Gospel, so that they could love each other, forgive each other, support each other, in short, live the Gospel, as they labored together. He wants us similarly to collaborate, to cooperate, to accompany and support each other this week. Look around each other with gratitude; each of us is meant to inspire the others and be inspired by them. The Good Shepherd who came, as St. John told us in the Gospel yesterday, “to gather into one the dispersed children of God,” wants us to live this week united.
• The second element is that Jesus wanted help for the journey of this week. On Palm Sunday, he could have easily walked into the city; after all, except for occasional boat rides, he walked everywhere, including sometimes on the waves of the Galilean sea. But on Palm Sunday he wanted to ride the foal of a donkey. Similarly, on Good Friday, he who had begun the way of the Cross, “obedient until death, death on a Cross,” could have completed the agonizing Via Dolorosa simply with human fortitude and divine strength. By divine will, however, the soldiers “pressed into service a passer-by, Simon, a Cyrenian, who was coming in from the country … to carry the Cross.” The use of the animal was a fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy announced by Zechariah, who had written, “Rejoice heartily, O daughter Zion, shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem! See, your king shall come to you; a just savior is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden” (Zech 9:9). Just as King Solomon had ridden a mule, so Jesus was riding a consecrated colt no one had ever used, an indication that he was indeed the Son of David and rightful successor to his throne. Whereas riding a horse would have been a sign of war, to ride a donkey was a sign that the one riding was coming in peace. Zechariah’s prophecy continues: “He shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth. … Because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your captives free from the waterless pit” (Zech 9:10-11). This King of peace riding on the foal of a donkey would be a universal king “from sea to sea” who would set people free not from political enemies but from the “waterless pit,” in other words, from death.
• As we begin this most holy of weeks, we learn from this colt, and from Simon of Cyrene, that the Master, despite his divine omnipotence, according to his humble humanity, has need of us, too. He wants us not only to collaborate with others in preparation for his saving work, but to collaborate intimately with him in execution. In the ancient Gregorian chant for the famous hymn “All Glory Laud and Honor” that Christians sing today, there is a verse in Latin that reads, “Sis pius ascensor, tuus et nos simus asellus. Tecum nos capitat urbs veneranda Dei,” which can be translated as, “May you be the holy Rider and we your little colt, so that the venerated City of God may embrace us together with you.” “Tecum,” the Latin for “with you,” is the way Jesus wants us to approach this week. He wants us to enter the Holy City with him. He wants us to collaborate with him in this work of his salvation. St. Josemaria Escriva sought to imitate and help others to emulate this donkey in assisting Jesus accomplish his work. “There are hundreds of animals more beautiful, more deft and strong,” he wrote. “But it was a donkey Christ chose when he presented himself to the people as king in response to their acclamation.” Jesus wants us, like a donkey, to be a docile, diligent, steady companion. That’s the type of companion Simon of Cyrene became, united to Christ in carrying the Cross. As Archbishop Fulton Sheen stated in his famous meditations on the Way of the Cross: initially, “Simon saw in the cross only a shameful burden of wood, not the burden of the world’s sins. Hence, he became at first an unwilling helper. But a few minutes in the sweet company of Jesus changed his outlook; his slavery became freedom, his constraint became love, and his reluctance became sweet abandon.” That’s the type of cooperation Jesus has need of from us during this week, and that’s the type of transformation he wants to give us this Holy Week and beyond.
• The third element we can mention are the branches that characterized each procession. St. Mark tells us that before Jesus entered the gates of the city, “Many people spread their cloaks on the road and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields.” In the Passion account, we have the wood of the patibulum of the Cross. In the famous hymn Vexilla Regis sung today and Good Friday, the Church states about the Cross, which it calls our “only hope”: “Beata, cuius brachiis pretium pependit saeculi: statera facta corporis, praedam tulitque tartari,” which can be translated, “O blessed tree whose branches bore the ransom of the world! Like a scale weighing the worth of the body, it took away Hell’s expected prize.” Just as we bless, wave and carry the palms at the beginning of Mass, so, too, we are called to be blessed, carried and waved by the Cross that unites us to the Lord. There’s great reason, therefore, that in Christian devotion, when we take the blessed palms home, we put them behind a crucifix, because the branches of the palms are linked to the branches of the Cross. Throughout the Middle East, at Jesus’ time and still today, palm branches are a symbol of victory, joy, goodness, peace, and, because of the nourishing dates that Palm trees produce, life. God instructed the Jews to use palm branches during the Feast of Tabernacles (Lev 23:40). King David was welcomed with palm branches the day he was enthroned (2 Kings 9:13). King Solomon had palm branches carved into the walls and doors of the Temple (1 Kings 6:29). The Maccabeans used palm branches to celebrate after they defeated the Greeks in battle in Old Testament times (1 Macc 13:51). The Book of Revelation describes the redeemed as “wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands” as they stand before the throne of God and of Jesus the Lamb (Rev 7:9). At the beginning of Holy Week, we Christians take up palm branches, we could say, to roll out the red carpet to welcome the Lord Jesus as he enters this week. We proclaim with joy his victory, his goodness, his peace and how he leads us to a life that will know no end. The priest prays as he blesses the branches: “Almighty ever-living God, sanctify these branches with your blessing, that we who follow Christ the King in exultation, may reach the eternal Jerusalem through him.” Renewing ourselves in the white robes of our baptism and holding palm branches in our hands, we stand before the Lamb as he takes away our sins through what he accomplished on Good Friday and then hope to join him, the Lamb looking as if he has been slain, and enter with him into the eternal Jerusalem. Just as we lift the palm branches, with similar fervor we “lift high the Cross, the love of Christ proclaim, till all the world adore his sacred name.” This is the triumphant song behind which the conquering ranks combine. This is the branch Satan’s legions fear and angels revere. This is the glorious tree by which Christ draws all to himself. And we lift it high as the fulfillment of the palms, the sign of victory, the means by which the Lamb takes away our sins, and the tree that produces eternal life. We lift Christ’s cross, and our cross, high, as a sign and means of triumph along the daily effort of self-denial and the procession of the Cross together with Jesus that constitutes the Christian life.
• The last element we can ponder are the expressions that are shouted as part of each procession. Those with palm branches jubilantly shout as Jesus enters Jerusalem on the colt: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is to come! Hosanna in the highest!” Hosanna is a Jewish expression that means, “Save now” or “Deliver us promptly.” It’s a recognition that Jesus was coming as the Son of David, as the King, to save them. These words are excerpted from Psalm 118, which the Jews used to sing on the Feast of Tabernacles: “Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord… The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.… Save us [Hosanna], we beseech you, O Lord! … Give us success! Blessed be he who enters in the name of the Lord! …Bind the festal procession with branches, up to the horns of the altar! You are my God and I will give you thanks” (Psalm 118:19,22,25-28). Jesus, they were proclaiming, was coming in the name of the Lord to deliver them and to lead them with thanksgiving ultimately to the Temple, to the altar, and to sacrifice. Little did they know what the fulfillment of what they were praying in the Psalm would entail! Likewise, in the Passion account, as the procession to Calvary was about to begin, the crowds erupted repeatedly with the cacophonous clamor, “Crucify him! … Crucify him!” Every day we echo those expressions. As Sheen wrote in his Way of the Cross, “As often as I choose to speak the uncharitable word, do the dishonest action, or consent to the evil thought, I say in so many words, ‘Release to me Barabbas,’ and to choose Barabbas means to crucify Christ.” We call for Christ’s crucifixion every time we turn to sin. But every day at Mass we make our own the words of Psalm 118 and cry out for deliverance. We pray, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” as we sing or shout, “Hosanna,” “deliver us,” “save us.” Christ comes to lead us to the Upper Room and Calvary, where he was crucified for that deliverance. On the branches of the Cross, he takes away our sins, every time we’ve chosen his crucifixion by opting for Barabbas in disguise. And it’s then that, like St. Paul, we begin to learn how he wants to change the words, “Crucify him,” from a murderous roar to a proclamation of God’s power, wisdom and love, as we recognize that on the Cross he cried out for the Father to forgive us because we really don’t know fully what we do by our sins, as he showed mercy and paradise to the repentant thief, as he made the Cross our sole boast and glory, the means by which the world is crucified to us and us to the world, indeed, our only hope.
• The drama of Palm Sunday, Holy Week and beyond revolves around whether we will prepare with Christ, collaborate with him and others, wave palm branches and be saved by the branches of the Cross, and cry out for deliverance and mercy as he sheds his blood for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus wants us to be intimately involved in his work of redemption. But the devil wants us to be present without real participation, or worse. Judas, we remember, was present at the Last Supper, but betrayed Jesus. Jesus said to the remaining eleven, “All of you will have your faith shaken, for it is written: ‘I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be dispersed’” (Zech 13:7). When Jesus was arrested, all of the disciples fled. Peter had sworn that even should others have their faith rocked, even if he had to die, he wouldn’t betray the Lord, but we know what he did. He thought he could follow Jesus at a safe distance, but when he was outed as a disciple, he swore three times that he didn’t even know who Jesus was. We see a similar thing in the young man who followed Jesus after his arrest covered in nothing but a priestly linen cloth, who, after they recognized him and grabbed the cloth, ran away naked and exposed. Many scholars in Christian history have long believed that the only reason why that curious detail was included exclusively in St. Mark’s account was that that young man was St. Mark himself. Regardless of who he was, we all learn a lesson, that is meant to guide our week. We have to make a choice to process with Christ up close. We can’t remain faithful at a distance. Holy Week is that time that we choose, even at personal cost, to remain with the Good Shepherd as he is struck down for our salvation, so that when he is struck, rather than fleeing, rather than denying, rather than having our lack of faith exposed, we will give witness to our faith that we see in Mary the Mother of Jesus, Mary, Magdalene, and a converted St. John at the foot of the Cross. That choice between proximity and distance, between explicit collaboration and fear, is one we must all make this week.
• And the choice we make this week is a choice that overflows into the entirety of our Christian life. Living Holy Week at a distance is one of the surest signs of lukewarmness in the Christian life. Living Holy Week up close, coming to the liturgies of the Triduum and even on Monday through Wednesday of Holy Week, is a means by which we grow in fidelity, love and courage. The Church’s journey through time can be likened to the continuation of the procession begun on Palm Sunday and Good Friday. The Church is, as the Second Vatican Council emphasized and Eucharistic Prayer III proclaims, a “pilgrim Church on earth.” We journey with Jesus in and out of the gates of the earthly Jerusalem toward the new and eternal Jerusalem. And that journey is ultimately Eucharistic. It’s in the Holy Eucharist that Jesus, who never ceases to call us to follow him, chooses to have us follow him. It’s in the Eucharist that Jesus keeps his promise to remain with us — indeed within us — until the end of time. That’s why as we think about how Jesus wants us to join him in procession on Palm Sunday and on the road to Calvary that we remember that he wants us to live out this journey through a Eucharistic life. The Church’s pilgrimage through time is ultimately a Eucharistic procession. That’s why, during the ongoing Eucharistic Revival taking place in the Church in the USA, there will be a 65-day Eucharistic pilgrimage, from the north, south, east and west, making a sign of the Cross over our country, culminating in the first national Eucharistic Congress in 83 years taking place in Indianapolis in July. One procession will begin in San Francisco; another from the birthplace of the Mississippi River in northern Minnesota, near the Canadian border; a third from Brownsville, Texas, near the Mexican border; and the last from the east will begin at the tomb of Blessed Michael McGivney, founder of the Knights of Columbus, in New Haven. Like the donkey on Palm Sunday and Simon of Cyrene on Good Friday, I will be able to carry the Lord not into Jerusalem but into New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and many other cities and towns along our journey, and priests on the other pilgrimage routes, starting May 18, will be doing the same in cities all across our country. I would urge you to try to participate for a day somewhere along one of the four routes. This is not only the biggest Eucharistic pilgrimage in the history of the United States but in the history of the Church. Just as Christ made immediate preparations for the colt and the room and remote preparations for what he would do with both, so Christ wants us to prepare not just for a particular Eucharistic journey but for the Eucharistic pilgrimage of life. He wants us to lift up the palm branches of our joys and the arms of our bitter crosses and unite them to him as he saves us through his passion, death and resurrection that we enter into every Mass. The Eucharist is ultimately where Jesus wants us to meet him as he comes to us each day in the name of the Lord, to receive the fruit of what he won for us by his crucifixion, and to continue the journey with him all the way.
• At the beginning of Mass today, in the prayer the priest prayed on behalf of the Church, we see the connection between the procession of Palm Sunday, the procession of the Way of the Cross, and the procession of the Church through time. The Church prays: “Today we gather together to herald with the whole Church the beginning of the celebration of our Lord’s paschal mystery, that is to say, of his Passion and Resurrection. For it was to accomplish this mystery that he entered his own city of Jerusalem. Therefore, with all faith and devotion, let us commemorate the Lord’s entry into the city for our salvation, following in his footsteps, so that, being made by his grace partakers of the Cross, we may have a share also in his Resurrection and in his life.” This is the way Holy Week turns into a holy life. This is the way we become followers up close and united rather than at a distance. Let us ask our Lord who prepared in detail for centuries for our imminent Eucharistic encounter to give us the grace to continue walking with him each day in a Eucharistic life, until with him we cross the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem that he blew open for us by all he accomplished during these most sacred days.

The readings for today’s Mass were: