Museum of the Bible Magazine will post the liturgical Bible readings for Holy Week that explore the Passion of Jesus. Check back each day this week (except Saturday) for these readings.
The Bible readings used for this series are from the Catholic Church lectionary, which has a three-year reading cycle of the Gospels. In Year A it is the Gospel of Matthew, while Year B is the Gospel of Mark and Chapter 6 of the Gospel of John. In Year C, which started the first week of Advent 2024 and will be read until Advent 2025, is the Gospel of Luke.
The Gospel of John, however, is read during the Easter season in all three years. Since May 2002, the revised lectionary readings are based on the New American Bible, the only English-language lectionary that may be used at mass in the dioceses of the United States.
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Palm Sunday, April 13
Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, Harold Copping (1863–1932)
Palm Sunday is one week before Easter Sunday. It marks the first day of Holy Week and the last week of Lent. This day commemorates Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, as told in the Gospels (Matthew 21:1–9 // Mark 11:1–10 // Luke 19:28–38), so named because the people of Jerusalem laid palm fronds on the ground to celebrate Jesus’s entry into the city.
Today on Palm Sunday, in churches worldwide, palms are distributed. The priests, wearing red vestments to symbolize the shedding of blood, bless these palms, and the congregation carries them into the main church. Palms are often woven into crosses, placed in a Bible, devotional, or near a cross. Since these are blessed, the palms won’t be thrown away but saved, collected, and burned prior to Ash Wednesday the following year.
These are the readings for this Palm Sunday:
Luke 19:28–40
Isaiah 50:4–7
Philippians 2:6–11
Luke 22:14–23:56
Find the other readings and other articles related to Easter here.
