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days before that day would be Thursday. Matthew describes the day of the Last Supper (Thursday) beginning 

with verse 17 (Mt 26:27). Before that day, Matthew describes Jesus at Bethany, where Jesus lodged at night. 

That event must be place sometime before the Thursday of the Last Supper (Wednesday, at the latest). And 

the comment, referring to two days time until the Passover, must be placed before the events that night at 

Bethany, either earlier on Wednesday (making two days until Friday and the Crucifixion), or on Tuesday 

(making two days until Thursday and the Last Supper. 

    The result of this analysis leaves us with three possibilities. The events of Matthew 21:18 to 26:1 may have 

occurred in a very short amount of time (less than three  full days from Mon. to Tues. or Wed.), or most of 

those events occurred at an earlier time (and so are presented out of order), or the events of Palm Sunday 

occurred more than a week before the Sunday of the Resurrection. 

    After describing Palm Sunday and before describing the Last Supper, the Gospel of Luke repeatedly 

comments that Jesus spent days teaching in the Temple.  And he was teaching daily in the temple.  (Lk 

19:47).  One day, as he was teaching the people in the temple .  (Lk 20:1).  And every day he was teaching 

in the temple, but at night he went out and lodged on the mount called Olivet.  (Lk 21:37). These passages 

seem to indicate that there were more than a few days between Palm Sunday and the Last Supper. 

    The Gospel of John, on the other hand, seems to indicate that Palm Sunday occurred on the Sunday before 

Easter.  Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised 

from the dead.  (Jn 12:1). That evening, Mary anointed the feet of Jesus. Then John reveals that a crowd of 

people came to see both Jesus and Lazarus, but that the chief priests made a plan to put Lazarus to death (Jn 

12:9 11). The events of Palm Sunday are then briefly described (Jn 12:12 19), beginning with the text:  The 

next day .  (Jn 12:12). This text seems to indicate that Palm Sunday occurred five days before the Passover. 

If the Passover is counted as beginning with the Preparation day (Nisan 14), then the previous Sunday is five 

days before the Passover. However, there is another possible interpretation of this passage from John's Gospel. 

    Not every event described in Sacred Scripture is in chronological order. Sacred Scripture is entirely without 

error, but where Scripture is silent (for example, as to the order of events) we cannot fill in the silence with 

assumptions. The phrase  Six days before the Passover  (Jn 12:1) refers to Jesus visiting Lazarus, and to Mary 

anointing the feet of Jesus. A subsequent passage (Jn 12:10 11) states that the chief priests made a plan to kill 

Lazarus. The very next verse (Jn 12:12) begins with  The next day  and goes on to describe the events of Palm 

Sunday. The  next day  could refer, then, to the day after the chief priests made their plan to kill Lazarus. 

This interpretation is supported by the verses that follow, describing Palm Sunday. These verses state that the 

crowd went out to see Jesus enter Jerusalem because Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead (Jn 12:18), and 

that the Pharisees, seeing the crowds on Palm Sunday, gave up their plan to kill Lazarus (Jn 12:19). Thus the 

events of Palm Sunday caused them to abandon their plan to kill Lazarus, the very plan they had made just the 

day before. 

    The above interpretation allows for the possibility that the day when the chief priests made a plan to kill 

Lazarus, and the next day, Palm Sunday, are described out of chronological order by the Gospel of John and 

actually happened well before the day called  Six days before the Passover,  when Jesus visited Lazarus and 

had his feet anointed by Mary Magdalen. John's Gospel may have described these events in a different order 

for the purpose of pointing out the connection between Palm Sunday and the raising of Lazarus from the dead 

by Jesus. 

    The great crowds came to Bethany, where Jesus  was staying six days before the Passover, partly to see 

Lazarus, because Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead (Jn 12:9). The chief priests planned to kill Lazarus 

because, after Jesus raised him from the dead, many Jews began to follow Jesus. Therefore, the plan to kill 

Lazarus most likely began at an earlier time, soon after he was raised from the dead and the chief priests saw 

the effect that this miracle had on the people. The next day after they made the plan was Palm Sunday. The 

events of Palm Sunday then caused the chief priests to abandon the plan to kill Lazarus (Jn 12:19). This is one 

possible chronology. 

    The writings of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich can assist us in deciding which interpretation is correct. 

In volume 4 of The Life of Jesus Christ and Biblical Revelations, on pages 11 19, she describes in detail the events 

of Palm Sunday.

470

 Prior to this description, on page 8, she mentions a pagan carnival that occurred about five 

weeks before the Passover.

471

 In the old Roman calendar (before Julius Caesar reformed the calendar), the year 

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