Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord (2026)
Have you ever watched something happen—something wrong, something unfair—and done nothing?
Not because you didn’t care… but because it was easier to stay quiet.
Easier to stand at a distance.
Easier to let it pass.
The Passion we have just heard is filled with people like that… and in that story, we see what indifference looks like. In fact, indifference is everywhere in the Passion.
We see it in the crowd that first shouts “Hosanna!” and then, only days later, cries out “Crucify him!”
But as we look deeper, we recognize that indifference can also take other forms:
• Sometimes it looks like fear—like the disciples who run away.
• Sometimes it looks like self-preservation—like Peter, who denies even knowing Jesus.
• Sometimes it looks like apathy or convenience—like Pilate, who knows what is right but chooses what is easy.
And sometimes, it looks like simply standing at a distance and doing nothing at all.
It was this kind of indifference that led Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, to write: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference… and the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
And if we are honest, indifference is not something far away from us. It often looks like comfort. Like staying quiet. Like telling ourselves, “This isn’t my responsibility,” or “I’d rather not get involved.”
And yet, the Passion does not allow us to remain indifferent. Because, in the story of the Passion, we also encounter something else:
Jesus.
And Jesus is anything but indifferent.
He does not turn away.
He does not protect himself.
He does not remain distant from suffering.
Saint Paul understood this and it’s why he could write, “He humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”
In these holy days, Jesus shows us that there are things worth loving, worth suffering for, and even worth giving our lives for.
And that is what makes Holy Week so challenging. Because it reveals that being a Christian is not simply about what we believe. It is about how we live. It is about whether we are willing to love in a world that often chooses indifference instead. The discomfort we feel when we allow ourselves to truly enter into the Passion—when we allow ourselves to see suffering, injustice, and pain for what they are—that discomfort is not something to avoid.
It is, in fact, the beginning of compassion.
It is what moves us out of indifference and into love.
On Palm Sunday, at the very moment Jesus appears to be most successful, the process of his rejection has already begun. Public praise gives way to abandonment. The crowd disappears. The world moves on.
And yet, Jesus remains faithful. He stays the course.
Blessed Francis Jordan, the founder of my religious community, once wrote, “The works of God prosper only in the shadow of the cross.” That is where we stand at the beginning of this Holy Week—in the shadow of the cross.
And yet, even here, there is light.
Because the cross is not the end of the story.
The light of Easter is already beginning to shine, even now, revealing that love is stronger than indifference, and that life will have the final word.
And so, as we enter into these holy days, the question is not simply what happened to Jesus.
The question is:
Will we remain at a distance, like so many in the Passion?
Or will we follow him—follow him into love that is costly, into compassion that requires something of us, into a life that refuses to be indifferent?
Because Holy Week is not only something we remember.
It is something we are invited to live.
Almighty ever-living God,
who as an example of humility for the human race to follow
caused our Savior to take flesh and submit to the Cross,
graciously grant that we may heed his lesson of patient suffering
and so merit a share in his Resurrection.
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
-Collect for the Mass of the Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord
Prepared for Divine Savior Holy Angels High School and Old St. Mary’s Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
