Feast: Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion
Masses: Saturday, March 23, 2024, at 5:30 p.m.
Sunday, March 24, 2024, at 8:00 a.m., 9:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.
At each Mass this weekend, we will distribute new unblessed palms for our faithful. At the beginning of Mass, these palms will be blessed and ready for the parishioners to take home and serve to commemorate the passage of Holy Week.
After the Sunday Masses, the blessed palms will be placed outside the main double doors to the church for the faithful who desire to take home. These will be available throughout the day.
We start Holy Week with new (unblessed) palms being distributed to the faithful as they first arrive at church and take them to their pews. The Gospel according to Mark is read and the entrance procession winds through the church to bless the palms held by the parishioners. There is no traditional greeting. The opening prayer (collect) is prayed and we enter into the Liturgy of the Word. Following the 1st reading, responsorial psalm, and 2nd reading, we hear Mark's passion account. After the preparation of the gifts, Mass proceeds with the Eucharistic Prayer. Communion is distributed and, following the Prayer after Communion, Mass concludes with a recession in silence as we enter into the sacred time of Holy Week.
This the Order of Worship for Palm Sunday:
On Palm Sunday, we remember the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. This was the first event of that momentous week which culminated in his death and resurrection. Our procession is an act of faith in the whole paschal mystery, for we know how the story we tell this week is going to turn out.
As we stand with the blessed palm branches in our hands, we listen to the story of that first Palm Sunday. Jesus had come to Jerusalem for the celebration of the Jewish Passover. It was a week-long celebration in which they recalled and reclaimed their liberation from slavery in Egypt. It was a time to retell the story to the next generation, so that they would understand what it meant to belong to this chosen people. Many of the pilgrims had heard Jesus speak and had seen the signs and wonders that accompanied his preaching. Others had heard about him. Many had begun to believe that Jesus might be the messiah. The feast of the Passover would be a fitting time to claim his role as messiah.
But the understanding of messiah which most of these people held was different from Jesus' understanding. On this occasion, Jesus used an image from the Book of the prophet Zechariah. Instead of mounting a horse, the mount of generals and conquerors, Jesus rides a donkey, as peaceful people did. Many of the Jews of his time expected the messiah to come with great power to conquer their enemies and re-establish the kingdom of Israel. In this image Jesus shows that the real path to salvation is the way of pardon and nonviolence. Many of the Jews could not recognize such a messiah. Some of those who hoped for a triumphant political announcement from Jesus during this festival ended up in the crowd who denied him later that week.
After the procession, the mood of the liturgy changes, and we begin to ponder the events that followed that glorious entrance into Jerusalem. The first reading from Isaiah 50 is taken from the third "Song of the Suffering Servant." It shows us the faithful disciple whose faithfulness is founded on the fide lit y of God. The passage was originally written about someone else, possibly about a prophet or about the people as a whole, or both. However, when we read this passage, we immediately think about Jesus. The servant is also an image of the Christian who recognizes that, even in the midst of the sufferings of life, God is with each of us.
The second reading, taken from Paul's letter to the Philippians, is a quotation from an early Christian hymn that is sort of a creed. This hymn proclaims the meaning of Jesus' death and resurrection. Even though Jesus was God, he obediently accepted the humiliation of the cross, and God raised him in glory. As we hear the passion story from the Gospel according to Matthew, we keep these images in mind.
The story of the passion is not just about an historical event. It has another dimension, for it calls us to see how that story is being re-enacted in our own lives personally and as a people. We have seen the power of evil in ourselves and in our world. We see the evil of selfishness, the loss of personal integrity, the loss of a sense of public responsibility, the threat of nuclear or environmental disaster. Sometimes it seems that the evil will triumph and that we are alone in our struggle against it. We retell the story to remember that God is with us in our struggle. We remember and are strengthened by the knowledge that Jesus obediently accepted the humiliation of the cross, and God raised him in glory. He has fundamentally triumphed over evil, sin, and death. Yet God's way is not some magic trick to release us from the evil. In the power of Christ, God is with us in the suffering and in the dying of our everyday lives, and not just at the end of our life on earth. We can expect that, through these sufferings and deaths, we can be freed from evil and grow into a new life.