Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Palm Sunday, Year A

April 2, 2023

Mt 21:1-11, Is 50:4-7, Ps 22, Phil 2:6-11, Mt 26:14-27:66

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.2.23_Palm_Sunday_Homily_MCs_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* We have now begun the week the Church calls “holy.” It’s holy, first, because of all Jesus Christ did during these days, from the triumphal entry into his city, to his teaching in the Temple, to the Last Supper, to his prayer in Gethsemane, to his arrest, torture, crucifixion, preaching and death on Good Friday, to his rest in the tomb and his glorious resurrection on the third day. It’s also called holy because it’s meant to make us holy, if we live this week the right way, if we enter into the mysteries we celebrate, if we internalize all Jesus won for us during these most holy of days and enter into a conversation with Jesus not just with thoughts or words but with our whole life. Holy Week is supposed to be our most faith-filled week of the year, but that requires our choosingto make it the most faith-filled week of the year.

* This year Holy Week is taking place within the first year of the three-year-plus Eucharistic Revival that the Bishops of the United States have summoned, and so what I’d like to do is briefly to look at today’s readings with the Eucharist in mind, since the happenings of Holy Week aren’t just events that happened 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem but realities that are actualized in our interactions with the same Lord Jesus present with us in the Holy Eucharist. So let’s look at seven ways that the dialogues that Jesus initiated 2000 years ago are meant to continue today in our conversation with him in the Holy Eucharist.

* The first interaction we can ponder is Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, which is the Gospel that we hear at the very beginning of the Palm Sunday liturgy. As Saint Matthew will tell us, Jesus told two disciples to go into the village, find a donkey tethered to a colt, and bring them to him, saying, “The Master has need of them.” This was to fulfil the prophecy of Zechariah in which the King and Savior would enter Jerusalem humble and riding on the foal of a beast of burden. Just as Jesus the Master had need of a donkey, so he has need of us. As the great Palm Sunday hymn “All Glory Laud and Honor” proclaims, “May you be the Holy Rider and we your little colt, so that the venerated City of God may embrace us together with you.” Jesus wants us to be as docile, diligent and steady as a donkey. In the Eucharist, he longs for us to receive him, not having him sit on our back but within us, and help him carry out his saving work. He longs for us to be present with him faithfully in prayer.

* We see the second interaction likewise in that initial Gospel. The large crowd spread its cloaks on the road together with palm branches as they cried out to Jesus, “Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” It’s not by coincidence that the Church makes those words our own in the heart of the Mass, right before the Eucharistic Prayer, in the Sanctus, in which we begin with the words Isaiah heard in his heavenly vision, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts. Heaven and earth are full of his glory,” and then add what the crowds said as Jesus entered the city. Hosanna means “Save now” or “Deliver us promptly” and we say that to Jesus who comes in the name of God the Father to give us that salvation and deliverance. Every Mass we’re called to relive, in other words, the joy of the crowds on Palm Sunday, as Jesus enters not the Holy City of Jerusalem, but our holy parish Church and then,