Colligite Fragmenta: Palm Sunday

This Sunday, Christ’s final days began.  This Sunday they begin again liturgically.  Through our sacred liturgical worship and by our baptismal character these sacred mysteries are made present to us and we to them in their devout celebration.  Now, again, our Lord comes to Jerusalem, mounted on the colt of a donkey.

Context.  For months the Scribes and Pharisees have become more and more hostile toward the Lord.  Just before the great pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover, Christ performed His greatest miracle: the resurrection of Lazarus of Bethany (John 11:1-45).  The leaders of the Temple “took counsel how to put him to death” (v. 53).

Following a brief stay at Ephraim and Jericho, where He predicted His betrayal, Passion and Resurrection, Christ returned to Bethany, to the house of Mary, Martha and Lazarus for a couple of days before His final journey to Jerusalem.  News of the miracle of Lazarus spread.  People anticipated His every move.

Christ finally headed to Jerusalem for His final Passover. He went along the well-trodden road, by which year in and year out the Jews made their annual pilgrimages. Christ the Lamb of God went by way of Bethphage, whence the yearly paschal lambs were brought to the Temple.  Here He instructed the disciples to bring to Him the colt of an ass upon which they put their cloaks for Him to ride like the Davidic Priest King Solomon who rode David’s donkey into the city with a great crowd (Matthew 21:7 cf. 1 Kings 1).  The people flooding to the city for the holy days, covered the way with branches and their cloaks.  The whole city was excited because Jesus was coming.  With each turn and rise, glimpses of the city were revealed from the Mount of Olives, glimpses of the Temple. Pilgrims sang psalms of the spring Passover and people answered, “Hosia-na!… “Save us!”  Hosanna… Blessed be he that comes in the name of the Lord.”

Then a change came over the crowds of pilgrims and residents.  The people stopped singing the usual Passover psalms and instead sang the psalms for the autumn harvest festival of Sukkoth, Booths or Tabernacles.  Sukkoth back to the days when the people in the wilderness lived in “booths” of branches.  Sukkoth also looked forward to the return of God’s presence cloud to the Temple which had departed with the Ark.  On that first Palm Sunday people cut branches and waved them toward Jesus, singing the psalms of Sukkoth rather than of Passover. Waving palms recalled the 2 Maccabees 10 and the purification of the Temple after the expulsion of the foreign oppressors.  They thought Christ would go to the Temple to offer sacrifice as the Davidic priest to bring in a new era, free from Roman oppression, and God’s Presence would return.

However, Christ would instead violently cleanse the Temple’s courtyard of the Gentiles into which vendors and money changers had encroached.  They had denied Gentiles a place to pray to the one true God.  In a few days, it was when Gentiles asked to speak to Christ that the Lord said, that Jesus finally declared that his hour had come. The Father’s voice was heard for the third time.  The Passion began.

The Lord had His ass colt to bear Him to His Passion and His Victory.   Although on that first Palm Sunday the ass colt recalled Solomon, and although Christ alone was riding when all other were walking, asses were an ordinary, everyday sight.  In our rites, we the baptized celebrate the triumph of Christ’s arrival in Jerusalem.  In your Palm Sunday procession, claim part of that victory as sharers in Christ’s mission.

During the Palm Sunday rites there is the blessings of palms or branches of olives which are to be distributed to the faithful for the procession that follows.   The blessing of the palms has a consecratory impact.  Card. Schuster, commenting on the pre-1955 Holy Week Rites, compares it to an anaphora, which is a eucharistic prayer.  He observes that one of the collect before that blessing prayer stands to the blessing as the Secret prayer of the Mass stands to the Preface, which is the entry into the anaphora of the Roman Canon.   Let’s look into the collect before the blessing of the palms.   Alas, in the slashing and hacking of the “experts”, foreshadowing the devastating work of the Consilium at the time of the Council, many things in the pre-1955 rites did not survive into the 1962 Missale Romanum.   This prayer is one of them.  However, even though you may not be able to frequent the rites in the pre-1955 form, or in the 1962 version, it is nevertheless apt for a point of your own preparation for Holy Week.  Our liturgical participation, when we are in the state of grace, forms us to give proper worship and to live our vocations, both of which are pleasing to God.

Auge fidem in te sperántium, Deus, et súpplicum preces cleménter exáudi: véniat super nos múltiplex misericórdia tua: bene✠dicántur et hi pálmites palmárum, seu olivárum: et sicut in figúra Ecclésiæ multiplicásti Noë egrediéntem de arca, et Móysen exeúntem de Ægýpto cum fíliis Israël: ita nos, portántes palmas et ramos olivárum, bonis áctibus occurrámus óbviam Christo: et per ipsum in gáudium introëámus ætérnum:…

Increase the faith of those that hope in You, O God, and mercifully hear the prayers of Your suppliants: let Your multiplied mercy descend upon us; may these branches of palm or olive be ✠ blessed; and, as in a figure of Your Church You multiplied Noah going forth out of the ark, and Moses going out of Egypt with the children of Israel; so may we go forth to meet Christ with good works, bearing palms and branches of olive; and through Him may we enter into eternal joy.

Again, you may not be participating in the pre-55 rites, but that doesn’t mean that your liturgical heart cannot be expanded by the profound treasures of Holy Churches wisdom.  Now that you know this prayer, let it ring within you whether you are in the Novus Ordo or the Vetus Ordo.

Palm Sunday Heralds the defeat of death and Hell.  Your palms as you go in procession, which you take back to your homes, are a token of the unfading palm of victory.  The earthly palm which you receive will dry and decrease but your heavenly palm will not.  Keep your palm branch or frond and put it in a place where you will see it, perhaps tucked behind an image of Christ Crucified.  May it inspire you, especially when life is hard, to persevere and to strive with grace to final victory.