(Palm Sunday 2026 (A): This homily was given on March 29, 2026 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Palm Sunday 2026]
The events of Holy Week prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we should
never base our beliefs on public polling data.
Never! If Mr. Gallup, for
example, had been around in the year 33, and had taken a poll on the very first
Palm Sunday, asking the people in Jerusalem the question, “Is Jesus of Nazareth
the Messiah?” I’m almost certain the results would been overwhelmingly positive—probably
about 95% yes, 2% no, and 3% undecided.
(Unfortunately there are always a few in every crowd who can’t make up
their minds.) But by Good Friday, those
yes and no numbers would have been completely reversed! And I dare say even a lot of the “undecideds”
would have crossed over to the “no” side.
But the important, decisive fact to remember in all of this is that Jesus
was still the Messiah on Good Friday! He
was just as much the Messiah then as he was on Palm Sunday! The change in the polling numbers would not
have changed the reality of who Jesus was.
The 2% who remained faithful to our Lord knew that, and so they were
just as much for him on Good Friday as they were on Palm Sunday.
I don’t know about you, but I want my faith to be like the faith of that
2%. And incidentally, this faithful 2%
was composed mainly of women (sorry, guys)—like Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and Mary
Magdalene. Their faith was not
undermined by the changing tide of public opinion. To put it another way, their faith was not
undermined by peer pressure. Their faith
also was not destroyed in the midst of the suffering they personally endured
with Jesus. Our Blessed Mother, for
example, had to stand at the foot of the cross as her only Son died right in
front of her eyes. For her, that must
have been a living hell. But she never
turned away from God. Not even then; not
even for a second. A person’s faith
doesn’t get any stronger than that.
All of us have a special opportunity this week to become more like Mary
and that faithful 2%. The liturgies of Holy
Week, the special times for prayer that the Church provides on Holy Thursday
and Good Friday, the extra prayer time the Church encourages us to engage in—all
of these are designed to make our faith rock-solid, so that we won’t waver in
our love for Christ and his Gospel—even if everyone around us is losing faith—even
if we’re in the midst of many difficult, personal trials.
It’s my simple prayer this morning that all of us will take advantage of this
opportunity that our Lord will give us in the next seven days to grow stronger and
become more alive in our Catholic faith. May it truly be a holy Holy Week for
us all.
