Homily for Palm Sunday
12 April 2025
Luke 19:28-40; Isaiah 50:4-7; Psalm 21; Philippians 2:6-11; Luke 22:14-23:56
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We now begin our holiest of weeks for the year. We follow Jesus into Jerusalem all the way through passion, death and resurrection. Each step of the way, the crowd, however constituted, has a role to play. Whether for or against Jesus, there would have been people in the crowd that week who were led by not much more than the herd instinct.
On this Palm Sunday, we share the joy and delight of the crowd proclaiming: ‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.’
The Pharisees are not pleased. They demand that Jesus rebuke the crowd and silence them. He replies: ‘I tell you, if they keep silent, the stones will cry out!’
Later in the week, Pilate tries to find a compromise. But he is shouted down by ‘the chief priests, the rulers and the people’: ‘Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us.’ When Pilate spoke again wanting to release Jesus, the crowd cried ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ Pilate makes three attempts to find a resolution but no one is interested in rational discussion, fair deliberation or transparent judgment. The crowd with loud shouts ‘persisted in calling for his crucifixion, and their voices prevailed.’
After the crucifixion, the crowd disperses with people returning home and beating their breasts while Jesus’ acquaintances stood at a distance, in silence, watching. And no, the stones did not cry out.
No doubt the crowd on Palm Sunday brought some consolation to Jesus, that he was on the right path. No doubt the crowd on Thursday night terrified him. And no doubt the crowd on Friday exacerbated his isolation as he cried out, ‘Father into your hands I commit my spirit.’
If only some of Palm Sunday’s crowd had taken a stand on Maundy Thursday. What would have happened? If only some of Sunday’s crowd had raised their voices around the cross on Good Friday, what would have happened? But they didn’t. And there’s no surprise in that.
We all know situations where we just go with the flow, when we simply join the crowd, when we follow the crowd instinct. Sunday was easy; Thursday was demanding; and Friday was just impossible.
Jesus made his way to passion, death and resurrection surrounded by the mob. Occasionally one of us speaks up or goes against the flow, but not often. Mostly, it helps to keep the peace. But every now and again, there is an event which occurs having us say, ‘If only I had taken a stand. If only someone in authority acted on the certainty of their moral convictions. If only those in charge had acted in the best interests of everyone and had an eye for those most vulnerable.’
In the past, I have not had much cause to reflect during Holy Week on the role of the crowd and those who incited them. But this past week, when Theodore McCarrick, one time cardinal and archbishop of Washington DC, died, the New York Times published a long exposé of the appalling decades-long saga and institutional cover up of McCarrick’s abuse of children and seminarians over whom he exercised great power.[1] Continually, McCarrick was promoted until he reached the top of the episcopal tree even though other senior ecclesiastics had credible evidence of his wrongdoing. Afterall, he was an affable man. He was well connected with US presidents on both sides of the political fence. He did great work for justice and peace. He was a phenomenal fund raiser for worthy causes. The crowd knew and did nothing. The crowd knew and turned a blind eye. Back in 2019, a Washington Post investigation found that McCarrick ‘had sent cheques totalling more than $600,000 to some 100 powerful Catholic clerics, including Vatican officials, some of them directly involved in assessing misconduct claims against him. The cheques were drawn from a special charity account of the Archdiocese of Washington, where he began serving as archbishop in 2001’. [2]
In 2015, I had dined with Cardinal McCarrick in the private dining room of the President of Boston College. I was honoured to meet a cardinal who had done so much for the church’s international commitment to justice and peace in some of the poorest, war torn places on earth. But, it turns out, this was a man who had also ruined the lives of many young people. Like the Pharisees, the chief priests and the rulers in Luke’s gospel, McCarrick knew how to play the crowd, and how to play the game.[3]
Jesus never played the crowd. He never played the game. Jesus went to his death at the hands of the fickle crowd. There are times when each of us is part of that fickle crowd. It’s part of the human condition.
This week, let’s accompany Jesus, reflecting on those times when we have turned the blind eye or simply gone with the flow for our own convenience or benefit, without any consideration for the one we saw riding on the colt, remaining silent when the chief priests and rulers preferred to spare the undeserving Barabbas.
My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
All who see me scoff at me;
they mock me with parted lips, they wag their heads:
‘He relied on the Lord; let him deliver him,
let him rescue him, if he loves him.’
My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
Indeed, many dogs surround me,
a pack of evildoers closes in upon me;
They have pierced my hands and my feet;
I can count all my bones.
My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
Fr Frank Brennan SJ is serving as part of a Jesuit team of priests working within a new configuration of the Toowong, St Lucia and Indooroopilly parishes in the Archdiocese of Brisbane. Frank Brennan SJ is Adjunct Professor of the Thomas More Law School at ACU and is a former CEO of Catholic Social Services Australia (CSSA). Fr Frank’s latest book is An Indigenous Voice to Parliament: Considering a Constitutional Bridge, Garratt Publishing, 2023 and his new book is ‘Lessons from Our Failure to Build a Constitutional Bridge in the 2023 Referendum’ (Connor Court, 2024).
[1] See Secretariat of State of the Holy See, Report on the Holy See’s Institutional Knowledge and Decision-Making Related to Former Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick (1930 To 2017), November 2020, at
https://www.vatican.va/resources/resources_rapporto-card-mccarrick_20201110_en.pdf, pp.440-2.
[2] See https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/us/theodore-mccarrick-dead.html
[3] See Report on the Holy See’s Institutional Knowledge and Decision-Making Related to Former Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick, pp.6-9.
