Palm Sunday 2012

The Procession of Jesus in The Temple
[Watercolor by James Tissot 1836-1902]

Mark 11:1-11

When they were approaching Jerusalem, in sight of Bethphage and Bethany, close by the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them 'Go off to the village facing you, and as soon as you enter it you will find a tethered colt that no one has yet ridden.  Untie it and bring it here. If anyone says to you, "What are you doing?" say, "The Master needs it and will send it back here directly",' They went off and found a colt tethered near a door in the open street.  As they untied it, some men standing there said, 'What are you doing, untying that colt?' They gave the answer Jesus had told them, and the men let them go. They they took the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on its back, and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, others greenery which they had cut in the fields.  And those who went in front and those who followed were all shouting, ' Hosanna! Blessings on him who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessings on the coming kingdom of our father David!  Hosanna in the highest heavens!'  He entered Jerusalem and went into the Temple.  He looked all round him, but as it was now late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve

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Notes:

1) Bible verses used in this post are from The Jerusalem Bible, Copyright 1966, Doubleday and Company, Inc. Garden city, New York.

2) The image above and others in this Holy Week 2012 series of Blog Posts, are of watercolor paintings by James Jacques Joseph Tissot, French impressionist painter and illustrator (1836-1902) I downloaded the images of Tissot's paintings from a digital collection assembled by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, Director of Joyful Heart Renewal Ministries He generously granted me permission to download and use the images in this Blog.  The images are in Public Domain so there are no copyright issues. 

3) James Tissot: "During the mid-1880s, Tissot experienced a religious revelation which led him to spend the rest of his life illustrating the Bible. He traveled to the Middle East in 1886, 1889, and 1896 to make studies of the landscape and people. His series of 365 gouache (watercolor) illustrations showing the life of Christ were shown to critical acclaim and enthusiastic audiences in Paris (1894-5), London (1896) and New York (1898-9), before being bought by the Brooklyn Museum in 1900. They were published in a French edition in 1896-7 and in an English one in 1897-8. Tissot spent the last years of his life working on paintings of subjects from the Old Testament (Jewish Museum, New York). Although he never completed the series, he exhibited 80 of them in Paris in 1901 and engravings after them were published in 1904. Tissot died in Doubs, France in 1902, while living in the Château de Buillon, which he had inherited from his father in 1888"  (The biographical text between quotes  is from Wikipedia )

Detail of a self-portrait of  James Tissot on silk (1898)
[Image is in Public Domain downloaded from Wikipedia]