Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

I often substitute-teach the 2nd grade catechism class. Today, Palm Sunday, we drew pictures of Jesus as King, and then on the back side pictures of Jesus “ecce Homo” during His Passion, crowned with thorns. I really liked their pictures!

As you can tell from their drawings of Jesus, girls and boys are not interchangeable! They are different!

I told the children that one of the soldiers put his red army cloak on Jesus because they wanted to pretend-dress Him as a king to mock Him, even though He really is our King. The boy who drew the one above explained that he also dressed Jesus in camo under the cloak. Paging Father Rick! Another very intelligent boy drew a picture of Jesus during His Passion, in which Jesus was saying “No! Don’t do this to me!” I told him that was a highly reasonable comment under the circumstances, but explained why it wasn’t what Jesus said. He erased and had Jesus, all sorrowful and crowned with thorns, saying “Yes, I will do it.” It is too bad I didn’t get a picture of that one, cause it grabbed you by the heart.

If  you ask me, that’s some first-class refrigerator magnet material. I thought of the little “ecce Homo” from Venerable Samuel Mazzuchelli’s altar at St Patrick’s in Benton:

At Mass: Bishop Morlino, about to douse us and our palms with Holy Water!: