Why is the Crucifixion Narrative Read on Palm Sunday Also?

by Michael Shackleton · Published March 20, 2024 · Updated March 20, 2024

Why do we read the Passion of the Lord at the Palm Sunday Mass? I can understand the reason for reading it on Good Friday but Palm Sunday is a reading with a celebratory connotation, so I feel the Passion of the Lord should be read only on the appropriate day, which is Good Friday. Please inform me of the reason because even some priests are confused about it – Lou Corbitt

From the third century, the liturgy during Lent strongly stressed the theme of sorrow for sin and the desire to unite Lenten sacrifices made by the faithful with Christ’s sacrificial passion and death.

The funereal colour purple dominates the liturgy and the chants and hymns are in keeping with the sentiment of sharing in Christ’s passion and death in acts of worship.

The first four weeks of Lent gradually build up this penitential ethos and then the fifth and sixth weeks fix our attention on the passion of Christ itself.

The fourth Sunday of Lent is known as Laetare (Rejoice) Sunday, from the Latin word of the Introit, which began, “Rejoice, Jerusalem, and celebrate all you who love her”. Rose-coloured vestments are worn instead of purple to suggest that in spite of the hard slog of showing repentance for sin, there is the certainty of the approaching Resurrection. In the past, there was also now a slight relaxation in fasting and abstinence.

All of this is to get the faithful ready for what was earlier known as Passiontide, the time of the Passion, which begins on the fifth Sunday of Lent (Passion Sunday). This was a period of an even more solemn liturgy with its focus on Christ disclosing his divinity to the Jews and preparing for his death in Jerusalem.

The climax of Passiontide starts on Palm Sunday, Holy Week, with the stress now firmly laid on the sufferings of the Son of God. The gospel of the Mass is the Passion of Christ as told by Matthew. Before the 1969 revision of the calendar, the account of the Passion as told by Mark was read at the Tuesday Mass and that of Luke at the Wednesday Mass in the same week.

The high point of the Passion, of course, is Good Friday. The reading of the Passion is taken from John’s gospel, and the liturgical drama commemorating its graphic description is played out in a moving ritual.

The outward liturgy has developed down the years but remains essentially the same. Holy Week continues to concentrate our minds and hearts on the Passion of Christ. And that is why it begins on Palm Sunday with Matthew’s version and closes with John’s on Good Friday.

The Church seems determined to remind us that Palm Sunday’s celebratory connotation is inextricably linked to Christ’s sufferings and death for our sake.