SUNDAY GOSPEL

Passion (Palm) Sunday 24 March 2024 Mark 14:1-72.15,1-47

The Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were to take place in two days’ time. So the chief priests and the scribes were seeking a way to arrest him by treachery and put him to death.

They said, “Not during the festival, for fear that there may be a riot among the people.”

When he was in Bethany reclining at table in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of perfumed oil, costly genuine spikenard. She broke the alabaster jar and poured it on his head.

There were some who were indignant. “Why has there been this waste of perfumed oil?”

“It could have been sold for more than three hundred days’ wages and the money given to the poor.”

They were infuriated with her.

Jesus said, “Let her alone. Why do you make trouble for her? She has done a good thing for me.”

The poor you will always have with you, and whenever you wish you can do good to them, but you will not always have me.

She has done what she could. She has anticipated anointing my body for burial.

“Amen, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed to the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”

Then Judas Iscariot, one of the 12, went off to the chief priests to hand him over to them.

When they heard him they were pleased and promised to pay him money. Then he looked for an opportunity to hand him over.

On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, “Where do you want us to go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?”

He sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the city and a man will meet you, carrying a jar of water. Follow him..