Triumphal Entry

Rector’s Roundup for Palm Sunday, 2022

Parish Family-

Tomorrow morning is Palm Sunday and the beginning of what we call “Holy Week.” In these most sacred of days, we will walk together through the last events of our Lord’s earthly life. In tomorrow’s Collect of the Day, we will ask God to grant “that we, walking in the way
of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace…” Holy Week is indeed a path we must walk with one another and with Jesus. It is something that must be experienced… pondered… journeyed through, in order that we may understand the mighty works of our Lord. In this way, Holy Week is much like a pilgrimage with the Resurrection being the destination and its celebration our joyful reward.

The great juxtaposition of Palm Sunday is that we will begin by blessing palms and singing “Hosannah in the highest!” but we will soon become the crowd which shouts, “Crucify him!” in the Passion Gospel of St Luke. The Liturgy which began with joyful celebration at Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem will end in a dark and brooding silence. This dramatic contrast reveals for us the irrationality of what happens in the next few days. We will wonder how the same people who joyfully greeted Christ one day are also those who demand his torture the next. But upon reflection, the crowd becomes an embodiment of our own irrationality, cruelty, and backwardness. Their sins are really our own.

One interesting and very old tradition to note is what will take place during the procession at the 10:30am Palm Sunday Mass. The Celebrant will pause at the doors to the Nave to offer a prayer, and he will take the processional cross and bang on the doors three times. Pope Benedict spoke powerfully about this action in a Palm Sunday homily in 2007:

"In the old liturgy for Palm Sunday, the priest, arriving in front of the church, would knock loudly with the shaft of the processional cross on the door that was still closed; thereupon, it would be opened. This was a beautiful image of the mystery of Jesus Christ himself who, with the wood of his Cross, with the power of his love that is given, knocked from the side of the world at God's door; on the side of a world that was not able to find access to God. With his Cross, Jesus opened God's door, the door between God and men. Now it is open."

I think this sums up wonderfully the meaning and purpose of our Holy Week worship. It is to experience anew the God who breaks into our world of chaos and confusion with the triumphant love and power of the Cross.

Every day this week offers opportunities to enter into these wonderful mysteries. In addition to the proper liturgies for Maundy Thursday (6:30pm), Good Friday (Noon and 6:30pm), Holy Saturday (8:30am), and the Easter Vigil (8:00pm), there is a daily Mass offered at 9:00am on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Currently, there are still some early morning time slots for the “Watch” before the Blessed Sacrament, which begins on Maundy Thursday. Please consider signing up to spend an hour in prayer with Christ as he waits his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane.

If there is anything most desperately needed in our world today, it is the message and experience of Holy Week within Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Who can you bring with you as we enter into this sacred time?

A full schedule for Holy Week is available HERE.

In the love of our Lord,
Fr Joseph Francis SSC
Rector