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Lord’s Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.

Prayer of St. Patrick

Lord, be with me and all who love you, this day:
Within us to purify us;
Above us to draw us up;
Beneath us to sustain us;
Before us to lead us;
Behind us to restrain us;
Around us to protect us.
In Christ’s name I pray,

by Saint Patrick (389-461 A.D.)

To Know God’s Word

Holy God, let me read and know your Word without distorting it with my feeble thoughts. Lead me away from the false truths of the world, from whatever values are currently popular in my society, from the harangues of other people who follow their own theologies and philosophies; lead me to your plain and eternal truth. Let me come to you as a child, emptied of the wisdom of the world, so that I may be filled with the truth of the eternal Word.

Mason Barge 7/24/2017

Love for God

I love You, O my God, and my only desire is to love You until the last breath of my life. I love You, O my infinitely lovable God, and I would rather die loving You, than live without loving You. I love You, Lord and the only grace I ask is to love You eternally. My God, if my tongue cannot say in every moment that I love You, I want my heart to repeat it to You as often as I draw breath.

~ (St.) John Vianney, 14th century

Meditation

[Do I hide my greed from myself with complacency?]

Dedication

I  dedicate this day to you, mighty God. I pray that your Spirit will lift me up this day, and that your face may shine upon me all the day long, that I might do your will and lead a new life in Christ, reborn in the Spirit.

Think of the day ahead in terms of God with you, and visualize health, strength, guidance, purity, calm confidence, and victory as the gifts of His presence.

1 Peter 3:16 (The Message)

John 12:12-19 (ESV)

Jesus Enters Jerusalem

The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written,

“Fear not, daughter of Zion;
behold, your king is coming,
sitting on a donkey's colt!”

His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.

The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign. So the Pharisees said to one another, “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him.”

Notes on the Scripture

he events recounted in today's scripture are celebrated as Palm Sunday. It was the day when Jesus was widely proclaimed as the Messiah by the Jews of Jerusalem; like Castro marching into Havana, or Charles de Gaulle marching into Paris at the end of WW2, the people widely believed that the Messiah prophesied for a thousand years or more, memorialized in the Hebrew Bible, had arrived and was marching triumphantly into the city to liberate it. As foretold, he rode on a donkey. Even the Pharisees were temporarily taken aback.

As we have seen previously, the Pharisees were not uniformly Jesus’ enemies. Many of them were on the fence, either as a matter of faith or simply as a matter of political astuteness. They thought that Christ was a political figure who was rebelling against the Sanhedrin—his most avid opponents were the great high priest Caiaphas and the Sadducees, including the powerful Annas, together with the Pharisee leaders in the Sanhedrin. The Pharisees quoted at the end of today's lesson seem to be arguing with other Pharisees, trying to convince them to support the plot to kill Jesus.

As the Jewish leaders had feared, there is a great popular swelling of support for Jesus. The catalyst for this had been the spectacular, and very public, raising of Lazarus from the dead in Bethany, just outside Jerusalem’s walls.

There is a great dramatic irony in the scene. We know, and the apostles know, that although Jesus is the Messiah, he does not care about earthly power and has no intention of becoming the political “king” of Israel. Somehow, the symbolism of His riding a humble donkey escapes them. He is operating in a completely different sphere. His real revolution is to occur at a level most of them cannot comprehend, because they have not listened to or absorbed his teachings.

The people hail him as a savior. The Sanhedrin fears him as a revolutionary leader. But, although they are correct that he comes to bring a new order, they are substantially clueless about his intentions. For he comes, not to liberate the Hebrews from slavery to Rome, but to liberate all mankind from the slavery of sin.

Christ Carrying the Cross by Girolamo Romanino, ca. 1542.

Daily Inspiration

“Overcoming Temptation”

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