Palm Sunday 2023

Pope Francis presided over Mass for Palm Sunday in St. Peter's Square on the morning of April 2.

Each of us has listened to the abandonment of Jesus, say to each other — each of us say to each other — “For me. He experienced abandonment in order not to leave us prey to despair, in order to stay at our side forever. And at the supreme moment, Jesus, the only begotten, beloved Son of the Father, experienced a situation utterly alien to his very being: the abandonment, the distance of God. The event is real, and the Lord’s abasement extreme: It is the abandonment of his Father, the abandonment of God. He sees the gates of heaven close, he finds himself at the bitter edge, the shipwreck of life, the collapse of certainty. We find it hard even to grasp what great suffering he embraced out of love for us.