Fr. Austin Fleming
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
Homiletic Pastoral Review
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
The Philippians Hymn Gives the Theology, and the Gospel Gives the History
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Basilica of the National Shrine
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
Dominican Blackfriars
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
Bishop Robert Barron
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
Featured Podcasts
The Passion Narrative of Mark’s Gospel
2015 – The Gospels are passion narratives with long introductions, dominated by Jesus’ death and resurrection. On this Palm Sunday, as we near the climax of the Lenten season, we examine four odd details in St. Mark’s account of Christ’s passion.
The Return of the King
2003 – Entering Holy Week, we see numerous stirring examples of Jesus’ fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. From the direction he enters Jerusalem to his mode of transport, we find again and again how he is the one intended to reclaim the temple and prove to the world that he is indeed the son of God, chosen to save us through his revolutionary example of love and forgiveness.
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
The struggle between doing God’s will and our own will is reflected in Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, and it parallels the human experience of praying for relief in times of suffering.
- 00:00 🌿 Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane reflects the struggle between his divine will and human nature, paralleling the human experience of praying for relief in times of suffering.
- 01:58 🌿 Surrendering to God’s will is important in prayer.
- 02:14 🌿 Struggle is symbolized by those two events.
- 02:19 🌿 The struggle of every human heart is to choose between doing God’s will or our own will, as seen in the two gospels proclaimed in today’s mass.
- 03:01 🌿 Struggle to maintain loyalty to Jesus throughout the week, as seen in the betrayal of Judas and our own sins.
- 03:20 🌿 We deny Jesus and his teachings just like Peter did.
- 03:34 🌿 Keep the event of our Lord’s passion and death always before our eyes as we begin Holy Week.
- 04:24 🌿 Our focus should be on God’s love and mercy shown through Jesus’ suffering and resurrection, rather than our own desires and actions, especially during Lent and Holy Week leading up to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday.
Fr. Charles E. Irvin
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
Human Suffering
Christ walks ahead of us into the mystery of evil. He knows suffering. All who suffer now have Him with us. Without giving us answers to why there is evil in the first place we are instead led by Jesus Christ to deal with suffering and death head on. The ultimate mystery is that sin has taken us all into rejection of God. It is prideful human rejection of God that is the root cause of all human suffering, separation from the source of our happiness, namely our turning away from the happiness of union with God. All of us have sinned; all of us are accomplices in bringing evil and the suffering that results in our world that results from it.
Fr. Joe Jagodensky, SDS
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
Palm Sunday
Once a year we gather together all the characters that make up our dramatic Christian drama. We think there’s a central character, Jesus Christ. Yet, he’s surrounded next week by all kinds of sorts. There’s that guy running to the ER with a missing ear. Those folks around the fire asking Peter to declare a faith he has yet to own. Then there’s that guy with clean hands ignoring responsibility and setting Anthony Quinn free. And, how about that unbelieving guy with a sword at the end of our story who becomes a believer? Of course, our drama would not be complete without the guy who proudly accepts thirty pieces when he could have easily gotten fifty. (Lacking in belief and poor in business.) Like those jokes from relatives, we hear words we only hear once a year – Kidron valley, scabbard, Caiaphas, praetoriam, tethered, Stone Pavement, and the worst of all, but the most beautiful is: “Golgatha.”
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
“Hosanna” …“crucify Him”
The twin words “Hosanna” and “crucify Him” depict the decorum of the liturgy today. The Gospels especially that of Saint Mark read today make us understand that that Jesus had set out towards Jerusalem in company with the Twelve, and that little by little a growing crowd of pilgrims had joined them. Jesus rode on a colt fulfilling the Prophecy of Zechariah, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, Lowly and riding on a donkey, A colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9).
Fr. George Smiga
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
No Homily
Each year Fr. Smiga exercises the option to proclaim the full account of the passion and to omit the homily.
As a result there are no homilies available on his website for Palm Sunday.
Msgr. Joseph Pellegrino
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
We Stand Beneath the Cross
A Poem for Passion Sunday
We stand beneath the Cross. With Mary and John.
The crowd is terrible.
They yell insults at the Kindest One.
This is what he gets, we get, for not being like everyone else.
Their ridicule hurts Mary and John and Us.
Msgr. Charles Pope
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
As we read the Passion we must understand that this is not merely an account of the behavior of people long gone, they are portraits of you and me; we do these things.
Bishop John Louis
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
Fr. Michael Chua
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
Life Issues
Palm Sunday B
Growing in the Love of God and Following Him Faithfully
Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion B
Frank Enderle
hile it is true that during Lent we should constantly meditate on the Passion and Death of Our Lord, it is also true that we should also think often about His glorious Resurrection. The events we commemorate during the Holy Triduum, from Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday, should show us why we need to grow in the love of God and to follow Him faithfully.
Holy Week
Palm Sunday (B)
Antonio P. Pueyo
When the Bible speaks about what is holy, it refers to what is consecrated. It means that a place, a person, a thing, a time, or an event is made separate for God’s purpose.
Memory Aid
Proclaim Sermons
Our favorite hymns not only speak our faith but are also memory aids. In his letter to the Philippians, the apostle Paul includes a Christ hymn to help them remember that God not only took human form but also adopted the outlook of a slave to descend into misery and then was elevated to the highest height.
Jesus and the “V” (Psalm Sunday)
Proclaim Sermons
So often, the church today seems to be many things, but not very humble. Apparently, this is an age-old problem, made evident in this letter written by the apostle Paul to the church in Philippi. The solution to selfish ambition and conceit is found in the humility of Jesus. But how do we adopt this type of humility? Perhaps it is in examining the extremes that Jesus is willing to take as he empties himself for our sake.
SOURCE: LifeIssues.net Homily Archive
Fr. Phil Bloom
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
Finding Hope When Life Hurts
Bottom line: The Case for Jesus and “Who Am I to Judge” will help you have the best Holy Week ever.
RELATED HOMILIES:
2015, Year B: New Mind and Heart Week 6
2012, Year B: A Loud Cry
2009, Year B: God’s Justice
2006, Year B: Body and Blood
2003, Year B: He Breathed His Last
2000, Year B: Why This Waste?
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
Meditating on Jesus’ Passion
We have listened to an account of Jesus entering Jerusalem for the last time before his passion. Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us people spread their cloaks on the road and Matthew and Mark tell us about branches from trees also. John gives us more information as he tells us the branches were palm branches (12:13), as a result of which we call today Palm Sunday. People waving palm branches as Jesus entered Jerusalem meant one thing: they were welcoming Jesus as a king or conqueror because palm branches were used to welcome conquerors. (NABRE note on John 12:13)
Fr. John Kavanaugh, S.J.
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
Dying
Superman had X-ray eyes and could fly. Captain Marvel muttered “Shazam!” and zapped defeat into sudden victory. Wonder Woman, better than the Amazons, could take on armies of marauders. But not Jesus.
I would have rewritten the script. Instead of picking up the ear of an enemy and somehow reattaching it, why not have Jesus use that power to knock all their heads off?
Even after Jesus was put on the cross, I thought the army could have come in at the last minute. The heavens could have opened up and the thunderous voice of God would boom: “What are you doing to my beloved Son? Take that!” Lightning and earthquakes.
Bishop Frank Schuster
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
“Eloi, Eloi lema sabachthani”
And so it begins. My friends, we have entered into Holy Week. The
Passion preaches for itself. We have entered into the drama of our salvation. Reflecting on this past year and everything we have experienced, Jesus’ last words on the cross in Mark’s gospel are poignant, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani”. My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? These last words from Jesus on the cross are from psalm 22. You may wish to pick up a bible this week and prayerfully read it, because in this psalm contains Jesus’ understanding of why his death on the cross was salvific for the human race. The last part of psalm 22 is quite revealing. Towards the end the psalmist says, “All the ends of the earth will worship and turn to the Lord…All who sleep in the earth will bow low before God; all who have gone down in the dust will kneel in homage.”
Fr. Michael Cummins
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
Humming “All Glory, Laud and Honor” – Palm Sunday and the Triduum
For about a week now I have been humming, “All Glory, Laud, and Honor” – the traditional hymn associated with Palm Sunday. The hymn is usually sung after the distribution of palms and as the congregation enters into the church calling to mind our Lord’s entrance into Jerusalem.
The Word This Week
Palm Sunday B
