Daily Gospel Reflection

Two Sides to Every Story

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant, where we're exploring the genius of Catholicism, the genius of the gospels, the genius of Jesus, and trying to look at the gospel each day for a word or phrase or idea that jumps out at you. Allow the Holy Spirit to guide you. You could read a reading 100 times and could be struck by 100 different things. But what is the word, what is the phrase, what is the idea that jumps out at you today so you can anchor your day with that word, phrase, or idea, anchor your day in the gospels. Today's gospel reading comes from the Gospel of Mark 11:1-10.

And when Jesus and His disciples drew near to Jerusalem to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, "Go into the village opposite you. And immediately as you enter, you will find a colt tied on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, 'Why are you doing this?' Say, 'The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.'" And they went away and found a colt tied at the door, out in the open street. And they untied it. And those who stood there said to them, "What are you doing untying the colt?" And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let him go. And they brought the colt to Jesus, and threw their garments on it, and he sat upon it. And many spread their garments on the road. And others spread palm branches, which they cut from the trees in the fields. And those who went before and those who followed cried out, "Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the kingdom of our father, David, that is coming. Hosanna in the highest." So what's the word or the phrase, the idea that jumps out at you?

There's a couple I'll talk to you about today. The first one is that these people who are cheering Jesus on, these people who are laying down their garments and their palm branches. These are the same people who are standing along the way of the cross on Friday when Jesus is carrying His cross, when Jesus is suffering. And the reality is, is that we need to learn to see ourselves in those people. We need to learn to see ourselves and our ability to be very courageous in living out our faith, and also very cowardly in not living out our faith. There are times when we are bold, when we do step forward. And there are times when we sort of shrink away and to be mindful of that, to have awareness of that, not to look at these people and say, "Whoa, these people are horrible." They're cheering him on Palm Sunday, and come Good Friday they're standing on the roads and letting him be crucified. That's the first thing. But the thing I really want to hone in on today is the second last line where it says, "The people surrounding Jesus cried out, 'Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'" I think that we want to be blessed, right? We want our lives to be filled with blessings. We want God to bless us. We want His grace and blessings to flow abundantly on us and on the people around us and all the people we love and care about. And really, there's a formula here that I think it's easy to overlook. And what does it say? It says, "Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." Now, if you reverse that, what do you discover? You discover that he who comes in the name of the Lord is blessed. It's a cause-and-effect relationship between those two things. And so the question is, are we coming in the name of the Lord?

You know, when we show up into a room, when we show up into an organization, when we show up into a project, when we show up into a relationship, are we coming in the name of the Lord? Because blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And if we come in the name of the Lord, we will be blessed. It is a cause and effect relationship. It's like a little, it's like a little equation.

It's beautiful, really, when you delve into it and you start to think about it, because I think we can all look at times in our lives when we realize, "Okay, I came in the name of the Lord, and there were great blessings surrounding that." And I think we could all look at our lives and say, there were times when I came in the name of myself and maybe things didn't go so well. Because blessed is he or she who comes in the name of the Lord. And so as we go into our day-to-day, let's ask ourselves, am I coming in the name of the Lord, or am I coming in my own name?

Have a great day. Have an amazing day. Remember, don't just be yourself. Be the very best version of yourself, all that God created you to be. One thing I did want to mention is, for the first time now, we're releasing a video every day based on the Daily Gospel. And so Lent will finish, and we have this Holy Week experience. And usually, our Best Lent Ever videos would end this Sunday on Easter Sunday. But every day, the rest of the year, you're welcome to come back and enjoy this experience of looking at the daily gospel just for a word or a phrase or an idea to anchor our days.

I hope you'll enjoy that, take advantage of that, and share that with your family and friends.