Procession with Palms

Today is Palm Sunday, the final Sunday before Easter Sunday, marks the beginning of the Holy Week. Christian churches distribute palms on Palm Sunday to commemorate Christ's triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, when palm branches were placed in His path, before His arrest and Crucifixion on Good Friday.  Great crowds of people thronged the streets waving palm branches to welcome Him. The people shouted "Hosanna" and laid their cloaks and palm branches from the nearby trees in His path.

Procession with Palms

Gospel: Mk 11:1-10

When Jesus and his disciples drew near to Jerusalem to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, "Go into the village opposite you, and immediately on entering it, you will find a colt tethered on which no one has ever sat.

Untie it and bring it here. If anyone should say to you,

'Why are you doing this?' reply,

'The Master has need of it and will send it back here at once.'"

So they went off and found a colt tethered at a gate

outside on the street, and they untied it.

Some of the bystanders said to them,

"What are you doing, untying the colt?"

They answered them just as Jesus had told them to,

and they permitted them to do it.

So they brought the colt to Jesus

and put their cloaks over it. And he sat on it.

Many people spread their cloaks on the road,

and others spread leafy branches

that they had cut from the fields.

Those preceding him as well as those following kept

crying out:

"Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!

Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is to come!

Hosanna in the highest!"