The Sixth Sunday in Lent (The Sunday before Easter)
Because there are four gospels, there are four accounts of the passion of the Lord. John's account is proclaimed every year on Good Friday.
Today, the final Sunday of Lent, we hear one of the other three accounts. The vestments this day are red, just as they are on Good Friday.
Most people call this Palm Sunday. It begins as a day for marching in processions. The gospels tell us that the people waved branches to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem. So today we too wave branches. The days of Lent have been a time to travel in spirit to the holy city of Jerusalem. Today we enter that city.
Any kind of branch can be used in the processions today. Olive branches are traditional because, ever since Noah's flood, they have been symbols of peace and forgiveness. In cooler climates, forsythia bushes, which are related to olives, come into bloom during this season. In most churches, palm branches are blessed and waved today. The Gospel of John mentions them specifically.
In the Middle
East, date palm trees grow in the incredible heat. In fact, they
need several months of very high temperatures (100 degrees or
more) to produce their sweet fruit. In warm climates people plant
palms in cemeteries as a sign that life is stronger than death.
For the same reason, people in northern countries plant pussy
willows and evergreens. Then they cut branches from these plants
for the Palm Sunday procession.
In our country, most churches buy palms from florists. But there
are places where people gather their own home-grown branches to
bring to church. No matter where the palms and branches come from,
they are all signs of life and resurrection. This Sunday is the
last Sunday before the Paschal Triduum, our Passover festival.
The branches help us to welcome the Passover.
(Adapted from Companion to the Calendar by Mary Ellen Hynes for Liturgy Training Publications).
Holy Week Rites - a journey with Jesus by Fr. S. Albert
Kennington
Holy Week is
a week away. It begins Sunday, 5 April. The first day is called
Palm Sunday although it has another name, also: The Sunday of
the Passion. It begins the most important week of the Christian
story - the week in which our Lord Jesus' crucifixion and death
are remembered before the joyful celebration of his resurrection
on Easter morning.
The history and meaning of Holy Week the rites are intertwined.
They are liturgical re-enactments of what Jesus and his disciples
did in the very week in which he was put to death. The stories
of this week are in the Gospels. We act them out in holy drama
so that our memories are stirred through all of our senses. In
the ceremonies of the Church, we "go public" and witness
our loyalty to Jesus Christ as ever-reigning Lord of lords and
King of kings.
In the first years after Jesus' death and resurrection, believers in and near Jerusalem remembered the events and the places where they occurred. Often in secretive ways, they visited the holy places on anniversaries; there they prayed and told the stories again.
After the Roman emperor Constantine was converted about the year 312 AD, Christians enjoyed a new freedom to worship openly. Constantine's mother, St. Helena, commissioned churches and shrines to be built on the sites of places where Jesus lived, taught, performed his miracles, died, and rose again. Christian pilgrims began to go to Jerusalem to pray at these holy places. The Church in Jerusalem adapted its long observed rituals to accommodate larger crowds. When pilgrims returned to their homes, they told of the Jerusalem ceremonies. In Christian communities over the world, variations of these ceremonies began to be observed as a means by which the faithful who could not go to Jerusalem might also share in the Church's recollection of what was then called the Great Week. A 4th century Spanish nun named Egeria (sometimes spelled Etheria) kept a diary of her pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Her notes are important records of these early rituals.
In the 16th century, Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer translated the Latin rituals of the Church into English and adapted the liturgies more for the use of lay people in parishes and cathedrals than monks and nuns in their cloisters. He began with the most used services first. He was arrested and put to death before he finished his work. He did not finish the Holy Week rites. For centuries, Anglicans have either improvised rites from the Church's abiding oral tradition or adapted rites of other communions. The 1979 Book of Common Prayer restored the ancient Holy Week rites of the Church: the procession with palms; the washing of feet on Maundy Thursday, the veneration of the Cross and communion from the Pre-sanctified Gifts on Good Friday, and the glory of them all: the Great Vigil of Easter with the blessing of new fire, the readings of our salvation history, Holy Baptism or the renewal of baptismal vows, and the first Mass of Easter.
Long-time Episcopalians find these rites new and unfamiliar for the obvious reasons. All Episcoplians can be so driven by the forces that govern our daily lives of work, school, family and the urge to rest and play, that we are easily tempted to skip these "extra" services. Many early Christians were no different, and for this reason, the Church began many centuries ago to read the story of the crucifixion on Palm Sunday. Had the story of Jesus' triumphal entry been read, too many believers would have gone from happy parade to resurrection morning with no attention at all to suffering and death. No matter how much we might like the happy parts, we have to engage the whole story.
The story of our redemption is glorious. The rites of Holy Week lead us through this story powerfully. They are the path of our journey this week with Jesus.