Sr. Sara Butler, MSBT reflects on the Gospel for Palm Sunday, March 24, 2024. You can find the Gospel Reading by clicking this link.
Today we hear the Passion according to St. Mark, an account that highlights Our Lord’s experience of abandonment. If we read it slowly and prayerfully, we notice Jesus’s mounting distress—not just his physical suffering, but also his mental sorrows. He takes his three closest friends with him to the Garden of Gethsemane, but suffers his agony alone while they fall asleep. He is betrayed with a kiss by Judas, “one of the Twelve.” Peter denies three times that he even knows him. The religious leaders sentence him to death on false charges, the crowds call for his crucifixion, and the Roman soldiers mock and torment him. While he hangs on the cross, the passersby and even the criminals on either side jeer at him. At three o’clock, Jesus cries out in a loud voice, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
Let us not break Our Lord’s heart by falling asleep and failing to watch with him. Let us be true friends! Let us never abandon him! Let us accompany him in his Passion this week, and by our love and devotion make reparation for all that he suffered to redeem us.