Holy Week/Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday.
(Copyright 1891, by the Cathedral Library Association.))
The Mortifications of Lent have brought our minds into sympathy with the penitential spirit of the church, and the gloom growing more and more intense during Passion Week has prepared our hearts so that putting away all worldliness as Moses put off the shoes from his feet we might stand in the holy place of our Lord's Passion. To-day we enter at last upon the closing scenes of His life. Palm Sunday is named from the palm or olive branches, or where these are not obtainable, the branches of other trees, which are solemnly blessed and distributed and held in the hand in remembrance of what the Jews did when our Saviour made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. It is also called Hosanna Sunday from the opening antiphon. Formerly it was called Pascha Floridum, because Easter is as it were in bud. The Spaniards having on this day discovered the Peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico called it Florida in honor of the Feast.
The ceremonies are divided into three parts: the blessing of the Palms; the Procession; the Mass.
The Blessing of the Palms.—In Cathedral churches the Bishop having vested at the throne in purple cope and mitre sits and reads the antiphon Hosanna which is sung by the choir. This antiphon and the prayer said by the Bishop immediately afterward, expresses the object and character of the day's function, viz., the joyful celebration of Christ's entry as King and the sorrowful commemoration of His Passion. The Sub-Deacon then reads a lesson from Exodus in which, with an appropriate and consequently beautiful analogy to the festival, God, after Israel had rested beneath the palm-trees of Elim, promises complete redemption from the Egyptian bondage with the evidence thereof in the Manna. The choir sings a Responsory narrating dramatically and antithetically first, the assembly of the Jewish Priests deliberating whether they should destroy Jesus; and, then, the prayers and monitions of Jesus in the Agony. The Deacon finally chants a Gospel which explains the ceremonies, recounting the triumphal entry of our Lord into Jerusalem. The Bishop, then, standing at the throne and surrounded by his ministers, sings a prayer in which two scriptural allusions are made—one to Noah who received an olive branch after the waters had subsided; the other to Moses whose people after leaving Egypt camped under the seventy palm trees. In the solemn tone of the Preface he describes how the whole creation, creatures, saints and angels, praise the great name of the only begotten Son. The five prayers which follow explain the mystery of the Palms, and draw down the blessing of God upon them and upon the faithful who receive and keep them with proper dispositions (see Holy Week Book.) These prayers like all the prayers in the church offices, "possess an elevation of sentiment, a beauty of allusion, a force of expression, and a depth of feeling, which no modern form of supplication ever exhibits." (Wiseman Lect. II. p. 64.) The Bishop sprinkles the palms with Holy Water, thurifies them and distributes them to the clergy, the choir meanwhile singing two antiphons that recall the enthusiasm of the little children of Jerusalem, who, with their Palms in their hands sang their loud Hosanna to the Son of David. (Guéranger; Liturgical Year). Then the Bishop prays that we may imitate the innocence and deserve to partake of the merits of those who thus praised our Lord Jesus Christ.
2. The Procession. The Bishop having blessed the Incense, which is carried at the head of processions to shed its perfume along the path—the Deacon cries aloud: Let us proceed in Peace; the choir answering: In the name of Christ, Amen! The procession then advances, clergy and faithful carrying their palms in the hand, for, with the Jews, to hold a branch in one's hand, was a sign of joy. (Lev. xxiii, 40.)
After the thurifer comes a cross bearer: then the purple robed acolytes and choristers, then the clergy followed by a sub-deacon bearing the Archiepiscoal cross, finally surrounded by his ministers the rchbishop carrying the Palm in the left hand and blessing the people continually with the right. The choristers are chanting antiphons in honor of Jesus, the king of Israel, "which beginning with the account of our Savior's sending two disciples to Bethania, to procure the humble ass on which he was to ride, describes that procession in a series of strophes, which increase in beauty till they rich a sentiment perfectly lyrical and exclaim: "In faith be we united with the angels and those children crying out to the triumpher over death" Hosanna in the highest!" (Wiseman.) The procession leaves the Cathedral and on its return finds the door closed—heaven's gates barred against fallen man. Voices within, representing the angels in heaven greeting the entry of Jesus into the Eternal Jerusalem, sing the praises of Christ in the beautiful hymn Gloria Laus. The choir without, representing man celebrating the entry of the Son of David into the earthly Jerusalem, repeats the strain of praise. After six verses of this immortal hymn of the Prisoner-Bishop, Theodulph, have been thus chanted, the Sub-Deacon strikes with the cross the door, which immediately opens and the procession enters—as Jesus opened for us by His Cross the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem. With joyful chant the procession returns to the sanctuary where the palms are laid aside and the Bishop resumes his cappa magna, and mass is begun. The blessing of Palms and carrying them in procession is of highest antiquity, (see Wiseman ib. pp. 128 & 129, Guéranger.)
3. The Mass contains nothing unusual—all traces of the joy of the preceding ceremony have disappeared save only that during the singing of the Passion the Palms the emblems of victory are carried in the hands as a protest against the indignities offered to Jesus by his enemies. In Cathedral churches the Passion is sung by three Priests clad as Deacons, one representing the narrator, a second, the persons who appear in the narrative, and the third representing our Saviour. For a more extended description of this dramatic chant, see the paper on "The Tenebrae."