21 March 2027 · Latin Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Syro-Malabar Rite · Syro-Malankara Rite · മലയാളം
“he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Philippians 2:8
Palm Sunday has two faces, and the liturgy shows both. It begins with a joyful procession and ends in the silence of the tomb. Here is how the day unfolds, step by step, so that a family can follow it. 1. Gathering outside. Where possible, the people assemble outside the church, in another church, a hall or the parish grounds, holding branches; in Kerala these are usually tender coconut fronds, kuruthola, often woven into crosses and flowers. The priest and ministers wear red. 2. The opening acclamation. All sing “Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel. Hosanna in the highest.” 3. Greeting and blessing. The priest greets the people, briefly invites them to accompany the Lord as he enters his city to accomplish his Passion and Resurrection, blesses the branches with a prayer and sprinkles them with holy water in silence. 4. The Gospel of the entrance. A deacon or the priest proclaims Mark 11:1–10 (or John 12:12–16): the two disciples, the colt never ridden, the cloaks and leafy branches, and the cry “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” 5. The procession. After the invitation “let us go forth in peace,” the procession moves to the church: the thurible, the cross adorned with branches, candles, the Book of the Gospels, the clergy and then all the people with their palms, singing Psalm 24 and Psalm 47 and the ancient hymn “All glory, laud and honour to you, Redeemer King.” 6. Entering the church. As the procession enters, a responsory recalls the children of the Hebrews who went out to meet the Lord. The priest venerates the altar, goes to the chair and, omitting the usual introductory rites, says the Collect. Where a procession outside is not possible, the Missal provides a solemn entrance, with the blessing of branches near the church door or inside, or a simple entrance with the entrance antiphon.
Then the mood changes. The first reading is the third song of the Servant of the Lord: “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.” Yet the Servant is not crushed: “The Lord GOD helps me… therefore I have set my face like flint.” The Psalm is the one Jesus himself prayed on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It describes with uncanny precision the mocking, the pierced hands and feet, the garments divided by lot, and then turns at the end into praise: “I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters.” St Paul's hymn in Philippians gives the whole mystery in a few lines: Christ, “though he was in the form of God,” emptied himself, took the form of a slave, “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him,” so that every knee should bend and every tongue confess “that Jesus Christ is Lord.” The procession of palms and the road to the cross are one movement: the King enters his city in order to give his life.
This year the Passion is read according to St Mark, the oldest and most stark of the four. It begins in Bethany, where an unnamed woman breaks an alabaster jar and pours costly nard on Jesus' head; he says she has anointed his body for burial and “what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.” At the Last Supper he takes bread, blesses, breaks and says, “Take; this is my body,” and over the cup, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” In Gethsemane he prays, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want,” while his friends sleep. He is betrayed with a kiss; “All of them deserted him and fled,” even a young man who runs away leaving his linen cloth behind. Before the high priest he is silent until asked whether he is the Messiah: then he answers plainly, “I am.” Peter denies him three times and weeps. Pilate, knowing Jesus is innocent, hands him over to satisfy the crowd; soldiers mock him with purple and thorns; Simon of Cyrene carries his cross. On the cross he is mocked by all, and at three in the afternoon he cries out the first words of Psalm 22. He breathes his last; the curtain of the Temple is torn in two; and a Roman centurion, a pagan, makes the confession that Mark's whole Gospel has been waiting for: “Truly this man was God's Son!” The women watch from a distance, and Joseph of Arimathea lays him in a tomb cut from the rock.
How the Passion is proclaimed. It is read without candles and incense, without the usual greeting, “The Lord be with you,” and without signing the book, because the Lord is going to his death. Often three readers share it: a narrator, a reader for the other voices, and the priest for the words of Christ, while the whole assembly speaks the words of the crowd. When we say “Crucify him!” we confess that it is our sins that crucified him; the Church teaches that the Passion cannot be blamed on all the Jews of that time or on the Jewish people today, and that all sinners were the authors of his suffering (Catechism 597–598; Nostra Aetate 4). At the words “he breathed his last,” everyone kneels in silence for a moment. After a brief homily the Mass continues as usual. Take your blessed palm home and place it behind the crucifix or the family's holy pictures; next year it will be returned to be burned for the ashes of Ash Wednesday. Then keep this week holy: the Chrism Mass, when the bishop blesses the holy oils with his priests (often on Holy Thursday morning, in some dioceses earlier in the week); the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Thursday evening; Good Friday, a day of fasting and abstinence; and the great Easter Vigil on Saturday night. Because 25 March falls on Holy Thursday this year, the Solemnity of the Annunciation is transferred to Monday 5 April 2027, after the Octave of Easter.
Theme: “Truly this man was God's Son!”
The humble King, the Servant who did not turn back, the cry of the forsaken Son, and the name above every name.
“Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Zechariah 9:9
“Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”” Mark 11:9–10
Apply: Carry your palm with faith today, and welcome Jesus as King of your home.
“I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.” Isaiah 50:6
“He said, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.”” Mark 14:36
Apply: Pray the prayer of Gethsemane each night of Holy Week over the hardest thing in your life.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?” Psalm 22:1
“Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was God's Son!”” Mark 15:39
Apply: Kneel before the crucifix on Good Friday and make the centurion's confession your own.
“By myself I have sworn, from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness a word that shall not return: “To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.”” Isaiah 45:23
“he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name,” Philippians 2:8–9
Apply: Bow your head at the name of Jesus each time you hear it this week.
The King hailed with palms enters Jerusalem to give his life.
Through the cross, the forsaken Son is revealed and exalted, and every knee shall bend.
Take-home resolution: Keep the whole of Holy Week: the Lord's Supper, the Passion and the Easter Vigil.
Dear brothers and sisters, today we waved palms and sang Hosanna. And a few minutes later we heard ourselves say: Crucify him! Palm Sunday holds both, the joy of the welcome and the sorrow of the cross, because the King who enters Jerusalem is going there to die.
Jesus comes on a colt, as Zechariah foretold: humble and riding on a donkey. Not a war horse, not an army. The crowd cries: Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! (Mark 11:9). Hosanna means save us. He will save us, but not in the way they expected.
Isaiah shows us the Servant: I gave my back to those who struck me… I did not hide my face from insult and spitting (Isaiah 50:6). And in Gethsemane Jesus prays: Abba, Father… remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want (Mark 14:36). He does not turn back. He freely gives himself for us.
On the cross he cries out: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Mark 15:34). He enters into every human loneliness and abandonment. Psalm 22, which begins in that cry, ends in praise. And at that moment a Roman soldier, a foreigner, says what the disciples had not been able to say: truly this man was God's Son! (Mark 15:39).
St Paul sums it up: he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him (Philippians 2:8–9). The way down is the way up. The cross is the throne of the King.
Take your palm home and put it behind the crucifix. Let it ask you every day: which crowd am I in? Come back on Thursday evening, on Friday afternoon, and on Saturday night for the Easter Vigil. Walk with Jesus to the end, and you will see the morning of the Resurrection. Amen.
Children, today we carried palms like the people in Jerusalem, and shouted Hosanna for Jesus our King! But Jesus was a gentle King, riding on a little donkey.
This week Jesus will die on the cross for us and rise again at Easter. Keep your palm near a cross at home, and say every night: Jesus, I love you, thank you for dying for me.
Almighty ever-living God, who as an example of humility for the human race to follow caused our Saviour to take flesh and submit to the Cross, graciously grant that we may heed his lesson of patient suffering and so merit a share in his Resurrection. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen. Let us also pray: Lord Jesus, King of humble peace, we greet you with palms and we follow you to the cross. Do not let our Hosanna turn into Crucify; keep us awake with you in Gethsemane, faithful with the women at the cross, and full of hope beside your tomb, until Easter morning. Amen.
Palm Sunday holds two moods in one Mass. It begins outside, with branches and Hosanna, as Jesus comes to Jerusalem on a colt. It goes on with the Servant who does not hide his face from insult, the hymn of the one who emptied himself, and the whole Passion according to Mark. The shouts of welcome give way to other shouts, and the disciples run away.
The Philippians hymn gives the shape of it all: down to the Cross, and then raised above every name. Holy Week opens on the road that goes through the first half of that hymn on the way to the second. The key words are Hosanna, emptied and handed over.
Setting.
Jesus has come up from Jericho (10:46), and this is the first time in Mark that he reaches Jerusalem. He has told the disciples three times what awaits him there (8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34). Bethphage and Bethany lie on the Mount of Olives, across from the city, where Zechariah pictures the Lord standing on his great day (Zechariah 14:4). Pilgrims were going up for the Passover, the feast of liberation.
The Lectionary also offers John 12:12–16. John alone mentions palm trees, and he adds, “His disciples did not understand these things at first” (12:16).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’” (11:3)
He owns nothing and borrows a young animal, and yet he speaks with authority. God can ask for what is ours.
“Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it.” (11:7)
Earlier he refused to be publicized (8:30). Now he acts out in public who he is, but in a way that does not fit what people expected.
“Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” (11:9)
Psalm 118 is a song of entry into the Temple (118:19–26). The Church has kept these words, and they ring out at every Mass in the Sanctus.
“Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!” (11:10)
The promise to David stands in the air. But the throne is to be a cross, and the inscription over it will say “The King of the Jews” (15:26).
How the Church reads it.
The pilgrim Egeria described the people of Jerusalem in the fourth century going down from the Mount of Olives on this day with branches, the children too (in substance). The Catechism says that the Church takes up the Hosanna in the Sanctus to introduce the memorial of the Lord’s Passover (CCC 559), and that with this celebration the liturgy solemnly opens Holy Week (CCC 560). St Andrew of Crete, in a sermon the Church reads in her Office on this day, says that we should spread ourselves under Christ’s feet, rather than cloaks or branches (in substance).
Setting.
This is the third of the four “Songs of the Servant” in the second part of Isaiah (42:1–9; 49:1–7; 50:4–11; 52:13–53:12). These chapters speak to Jews in exile in Babylon. Who the Servant was in the first place is much discussed: Israel, or a faithful figure within Israel, or the prophet himself. The Servant here does not yet die, but he is already suffering, and he does not run away.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens” (50:4)
The gift of a comforting word comes from a morning habit: listening to God before speaking to anyone.
“The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward.” (50:5)
Obedience (from the Latin “to listen”) is what makes the suffering a gift and not only a misfortune.
“I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.” (50:6)
“I gave”: he is not merely overcome. Pulling the beard was a deep insult in that world. Mark tells of the spitting at Jesus’ trial (14:65; 15:19).
“The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced;” (50:7)
The verse does not say that the pain has stopped. All the confidence is in who stands beside him. The same note sounds at the end of the Passion psalm (Psalm 22:22–23).
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says that the Servant Songs proclaim the meaning of Jesus’ Passion (CCC 713), and that Jesus himself explained his life and death in the light of the Suffering Servant (CCC 601). The Church reads Isaiah 50 on this day so that we hear the Passion as willing obedience, from one who has listened to the Father every morning of his life.
Setting.
St Paul writes from prison (1:13) to a community he loves, which has its own rivalries. In 2:1–5 he asks them to have “the same mind” that was in Christ Jesus, and then come these verses. Many scholars think that this is an early Christian hymn that Paul is quoting or shaping; if so, it shows how very early believers already worshipped Christ.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,” (2:6)
Adam grasped at being like God (Genesis 3:5). Many readers have seen Christ here as the new Adam, who does the opposite.
“but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” (2:7)
St Leo the Great says in his Tome that this emptying was a stooping down of compassion, not a loss of power (in substance).
“he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death…even death on a cross.” (2:8)
The last phrase breaks the rhythm. Crucifixion was a death of shame, given to slaves and rebels. No one in Paul’s world would have put it in a hymn to a god, and that is the point.
“Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name,” (2:9)
Many take this name to be “Lord” (v. 11), the title that the Greek Old Testament used for God’s own name.
“so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend,” (2:10)
This takes up Isaiah 45:23, “To me every knee shall bow”, words spoken by the Lord himself. Paul applies them to Jesus.
“and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (2:11)
The honor given to the Son does not take from the Father. It is “to the glory of God the Father”.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism quotes the hymn as the Church’s song of the Incarnation (CCC 461), and teaches that calling Jesus “Lord” confesses his divinity (CCC 449). The Church prays it every Saturday evening in the Liturgy of the Hours, at the start of the Sunday. Today’s verse before the Passion also takes up vv. 8–9 of this hymn.
Setting.
Many scholars think that Mark is the earliest of the four Gospels, and it gives the Passion a very large part of its pages. Ancient tradition, reported by Papias, links Mark with the preaching of St Peter, and Peter’s failure is told here without any softening.
Background. Pontius Pilate was the Roman prefect of Judea from about AD 26 to 36. Only he could order a crucifixion, a Roman punishment. Passover recalled Israel’s release from Egypt, and Jerusalem was crowded with pilgrims. In Mark the Last Supper is a Passover meal (14:12).
Mark’s account is bare. Jesus speaks less and less: he answers the high priest and says little to Pilate, then falls silent until the cry from the Cross. Everyone leaves him, one group after another. The first human being in this Gospel to call him God’s Son is a Roman soldier, at the moment of his death.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Take; this is my body.” (14:22)
The words come in the middle of a Passover meal, on the night of betrayal. He gives what they are about to take from him.
“This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” (14:24)
“Blood of the covenant” repeats Moses’ words at Sinai (Exodus 24:8), and “for many” recalls the Servant who “bore the sin of many” (Isaiah 53:12). The Catechism says that in the Eucharist the sacrifice of the Cross is made present (CCC 1365–1366).
“Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.” (14:36)
He really asks, and he truly fears. Here is a true human will, which accepts the cup from the Father’s hands (CCC 612). Three times he comes back and finds them asleep.
“All of them deserted him and fled.” (14:50)
Just a little before, “all of them said the same”: they would die with him (14:31). From here on, he is alone.
“Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?…I am;” (14:61–62)
After long silence comes his first open public claim in Mark, and he joins to it Daniel 7:13 and Psalm 110:1. The secret comes out only when no one can mistake him for a conqueror, as he stands bound before his judges.
“And he broke down and wept.” (14:72)
Only Mark says the cock crows twice. Peter’s story does not end here (16:7). St Ambrose says that he reads of Peter’s tears, but not of what he said (in substance).
“Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (15:34)
The first line of Psalm 22, in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. The psalm begins in abandonment and ends in praise. Whoever prays its opening line is still calling God “my God”.
“And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.” (15:38)
“From top to bottom”: the act comes from above. Mark gives no explanation, and readers have seen in it both a sign of grief and a way opened to God (compare Hebrews 10:19–20).
“Truly this man was God’s Son!” (15:39)
This looks back to the first verse of the Gospel (1:1). No miracle moves him: only “that in this way he breathed his last”. A Gentile soldier is the first human being in this Gospel to say what we have come here to say.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism follows the Passion step by step. It speaks of the Supper as the anticipation of Jesus’ willing offering (CCC 610), and of his acceptance of the cup at Gethsemane (CCC 612). On the cry from the Cross, it says that he did not experience reprobation as if he himself had sinned, but in redeeming love he took us on, in our state of sin, and could say it in our name (CCC 603). Quoting the Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent, it says that sinners were the authors and ministers of all the Redeemer’s sufferings (CCC 598).
Who is responsible for the death of Jesus?
Mark names particular people: Judas, some of the temple leaders, Pilate, the soldiers, and a crowd stirred up on one morning. The Church teaches firmly that the Passion “cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today” (Nostra Aetate 4; CCC 597). She adds that all sinners were its authors, and that we Christians bear the greater guilt when we sin knowingly against him (CCC 598). Jesus’ own consent stands behind it all (CCC 609).
Did the Father really abandon Jesus on the Cross?
The Father and the Son were never divided: Jesus’ redeeming love always united him to the Father (CCC 603). The cry is real anguish, and it is also prayer: he is praying Psalm 22, which ends with trust. Those who feel abandoned by God today can pray with the same words, knowing that he has been there before them.
Mark does not mention palms. Why do we carry them?
Mark speaks of “leafy branches” cut in the fields (11:8). John’s Gospel has “branches of palm trees” (12:13), and palms were a sign of victory. In Kerala people commonly carry tender coconut fronds. The point lies in what is shouted, and in who is welcomed.
The Roman liturgy opens today with the blessing of branches and the Gospel of the entry, followed by a procession or a solemn entrance. Red vestments are worn. The Passion is read without candles, incense or the signing of the book, and when it reaches the death of Jesus, all kneel and pause. Today begins Holy Week, the week when the Church walks with the Lord through his Passover. Keep the blessed branch at home, near a crucifix: it is the sign of a promise made in public, and traditionally the following year’s ashes are made from such branches.