On Palm Sunday the Church offers us two Gospels.  Our first Gospel records the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, an entry that bestows clear royal connotations on the events of Holy Week.  Turning to the beginning of our second Gospel we'll unveil two more themes: a nuptial theme evidenced in the anointing of Jesus  by the woman of Bethany and a Passover theme born out of a tentative detail in our Gospel passage that lends a torrent of meaning to the Eucharistic meal.

Diving deep into our Gospel we'll spend our episode looking closer at:

- The village of Bethphage, its location, and the significance of its geographic setting [5:29]

- The debate over whether Jesus rode a horse or a donkey into Jerusalem and the allusions invoked by his chosen mode of transportation [8:00]

- What "Hosanna" actually translates as and the Psalm that it is decidedly linked to [19:00]

- The nuptial overtones of the anointing at Bethany and the powerful message that the broken alabaster jar sends [25:04]

- A tiny detail in Jesus' instructions for the preparation of the Passover that unlocks a floodgate of information regarding the Last Supper [36:14]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bergsma, John. Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Revealing the Jewish Roots of Christianity. New York: Image, 2019.

Donahue, John R., and Daniel J. Harrington. The Gospel of Mark. Edited by Daniel J. Harrington. Vol. 2. Sacra Pagina Series. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002.

Marcus, Joel. Mark 1–8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Vol. 27. Anchor Yale Bible. New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2008.

Pitre, Brant. Jesus the Bridegroom: The Greatest Love Story Ever Told. New York: Image, 2017.

REFERENCES

Zechariah 9:9 - Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass.

Genesis 49:8-11 - "Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down before you. Judah is a lion’s whelp; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as a lioness; who dares rouse him up? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. Binding his foal to the vine and his ass’s colt to the choice vine"

1 Kings 1:33 - "And the king said to them, 'Take with you the servants of your lord, and cause Solomon my son to ride on my own mule'"

2 Kings 9:13 - "Then in haste every man of them took his garment, and put it under him on the bare steps, and they blew the trumpet, and proclaimed, 'Jehu is king.'"

1 Maccabees 13:51 - "On the twenty-third day of the second month, in the one hundred and seventy-first year, the Jews entered it with praise and palm branches, and with harps and cymbals and stringed instruments, and with hymns and songs, because a great enemy had been crushed and removed from Israel."

Psalm 118:25-27 - "Save us, we beseech thee, O LORD! O LORD, we beseech thee, give us success! Blessed be he who enters in the name of the LORD! We bless you from the house of the LORD. The LORD is God, and he has given us light. Bind the festal procession with branches, up to the horns of the altar!"

Song of Solomon 1:12 - "While the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance."