{"id":6849,"date":"2023-04-02T18:51:54","date_gmt":"2023-04-02T18:51:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/?p=6849"},"modified":"2023-04-03T03:00:29","modified_gmt":"2023-04-03T03:00:29","slug":"palm-sunday-2023-holy-week-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/palm-sunday-2023-holy-week-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"Palm Sunday, 2023: Holy Week Begins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/triumphal-entry-into-jerusalem\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/brendans-island.com\/blogsource\/20190304ff\/20190410-740px-The_Entrance_of_Christ_into_Jerusalem_MET_DP827946-658.jpg?resize=640%2C519&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Gustav Ferdinand K\u00f6nig's 'The Entrance of Christ into Jerusalem' (1841) via The Met, used w\/o permission\" width=\"640\" height=\"519\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Today is Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week. Lent is almost over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a name=\"Jesus\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/good-friday\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/brendans-island.com\/blogsource\/201508ff\/Eccehomo1-329.jpg?w=640&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Antonio Ciseri's 'Ecce homo'. (1871) via Wikipedia, used w\/o permission\" align=\"right\"><\/a>At Mass this morning, we walked through our Lord&#8217;s last days in Jerusalem, starting with the first century equivalent of a ticker tape parade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus was top of the charts, wildly popular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many folks apparently thought they&#8217;d finally met their messianic king. And they had, although Jesus wasn&#8217;t the secular messiah they&#8217;d been expecting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Grass roots opinion apparently was that Jesus looked like someone who&#8217;d finally end the Roman occupation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The powers that be had the same idea. And it scared them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I can see their viewpoint. If this Jesus person said &#8216;I&#8217;m the king,&#8217; and made it stick, then they&#8217;d be out of a job. After that, the Roman governor would send in troops and they&#8217;d lose everything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So they arrested Jesus, tried and convicted him in a kangaroo court and pressured the Roman governor to enforce the death penalty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/good-friday\/#torture\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/brendans-island.com\/blogsource\/20170306ff\/20170429-PhysicalDeathOfJesusFig2-329.jpg?w=640&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"From William D. Edwards, MD; Wesley J. Gabel, MDiv; Floyd E. Hosmer, MS, AMI's 'On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ', JAMA (March 21, 1986) used w\/o permission\" align=\"right\"><\/a>Then, after a really bad night, our Lord was nailed to a cross and died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One Apostle committed suicide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The rest kept a low profile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If our Lord was the national hero that folks had been expecting, then that first Holy Week would have ended in a tragic fiasco. But Jesus wasn&#8217;t, and it didn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Two millennia later, we&#8217;re still celebrating. That sounds crazy, at best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But it&#8217;s not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A few days after his messy death, Jesus stopped being dead. And that&#8217;s another topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s been one of those weeks, so today&#8217;s post is a slightly-abbreviated version of what I did for Palm Sunday, 2021:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/holy-week-top-of-the-charts-to-lethal-fiasco\/\">Holy Week: Top of the Charts to Lethal Fiasco<\/a>&#8220;<br>(March 28, 2021)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/something-wonderful\/\">Something Wonderful<\/a>&#8220;<br>(April 9, 2020)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/good-friday\/\">Good Friday<\/a>&#8220;<br>(April 19, 2019)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/triumphal-entry-into-jerusalem\/\">Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem<\/a>&#8220;<br>(April 14, 2019)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/the-eighth-day-two-millennia-and-counting\/\">The Eighth Day: Two Millennia and Counting<\/a>&#8220;<br>(April 16, 2017)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today is Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week. Lent is almost over. At Mass this morning, we walked through our Lord&#8217;s last days in Jerusalem, starting with the first century equivalent of a ticker tape parade. Jesus was top &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/palm-sunday-2023-holy-week-begins\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"Holy Week: Jesus went from top of the charts to torture and execution. Two millennia later, we are still celebrating. Which sounds crazy, but is not.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"Palm Sunday, 2023: Holy Week Begins","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[215],"tags":[119,90,69],"class_list":["post-6849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-being-catholic","tag-easter","tag-holidays","tag-jesus"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7Dwtw-1Mt","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6849"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6871,"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6849\/revisions\/6871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}