It might sound one thing of a leap that we’ve gone from the start of Lent to Palm Sunday in a single week. However — except your parish has grownup catechumens getting ready for Baptism on the Easter Vigil (during which case there will likely be specific prayers, blessings, and dismissals for them after the Sunday homily) — the Plenty of Lent will largely resemble Plenty that Catholics expertise all year long. It’s solely with Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday, that the liturgy begins usually to reveal distinctive options, and it’s these we need to talk about.
To begin with, whereas we communicate of “Holy Week” it’s not an important characteristic of those closing days of Lent and the approaching of the Paschal Triduum. The time period, in actual fact, will be deceptive. “Holy Week” truly spans two totally different liturgical seasons: Lent and the Paschal Triduum. Palm Sunday in addition to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and most of Thursday are a part of Lent. The interval from the Night Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday via Night Prayer II (Vespers) on Easter Sunday night time is the Paschal or Easter Triduum, “the Nice Three Days.” The Paschal Triduum is an important interval of the Church’s whole liturgical yr. The time period “Holy Week” will be deceptive if it results in us pondering of the Paschal Triduum as simply one other “half” of Lent. It completely just isn’t!
Now, again to Palm Sunday. For those who have a look at your missal, the day truly has an extended title. It’s “Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Ardour.” There’s a cause for that.
It’s additionally uncommon that, on Palm Sunday, you’ll hear two Gospels. There’s a cause for that, too.
The variations begin with the beginning of Mass. In contrast to most Plenty, the place the celebrant enters the church and processes to the altar, the Mass on Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Ardour virtually all the time begins with a extra prolonged ceremony. The truth is, the priest has three choices: a “procession,” a “solemn entrance” and a “easy entrance.”
The “procession” normally begins with the priest and the trustworthy in some unspecified time in the future exterior the church the place the Mass will likely be celebrated, which then strikes in procession with palms to that time. The “solemn entrance” begins on the church itself, relatively than some level past the church, although it enters the church with a solemn procession. The “easy entrance” seems to start very similar to an unusual Mass.
The procession and solemn entrance each contain the blessing of palms. The priest reminds the congregation that they’ve been getting ready all through Lent to accompany the Lord via his Ardour, Demise and Resurrection, and now we stand on the rapid threshold of these occasions. The priest then blesses the palms and the priest and folks can course of with them. The Gospel account of Jesus’ entrance to Jerusalem is learn.
If the Procession or Solemn entrance is used, these ceremonies substitute for a lot of what in a typical Mass is known as the “introductory rites.” The priest, upon arriving on the altar, normally begins with the Acquire.
Within the Palm Sunday Liturgy of the Phrase, the Gospel will all the time be the Lord’s Ardour in keeping with one of many Synoptics (Matthew, Mark or Luke). This yr, it’s Mark, the shortest Ardour narrative. As a result of Jesus’ Ardour, Demise and Resurrection is the central thriller of Christianity, the Gospel writers dedicate proportionately larger consideration to these occasions, therefore, the size of the Ardour narratives. Additionally it is a practice that the Ardour narrative is split into spoken elements, normally one for Christ (all the time the priest), one for notably vital remarks by audio system aside from Christ (a reader), one for the crowds (which incorporates, and subsequently is spoken by us, the congregation), and one for the narrator.
The fundamental strains of the Ardour narratives are the identical within the three Synoptic Gospels (in addition to in John), however the sacred writers additionally select to emphasise totally different occasions and to intensify totally different themes. That’s as a result of every had his personal viewers, to which he was talking particularly methods. Matthew, for instance, was talking to Jewish converts to Christianity and so regularly peppers his textual content with references to the Outdated Testomony, so as to reveal that Jesus is the success of what Israel was anticipating.
These are the first variations between the liturgy as skilled on “Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Ardour” and the opposite Sundays of the yr. As soon as once more that title, and — as soon as once more — why the 2 Gospels?
That goes again in historical past. Keep in mind that, in antiquity, our fashionable technique of communication didn’t exist. There have been no printing presses, no electronic mail. Whereas, early on, the liturgy of Rome was the measure for Christians, it’s additionally true that liturgical practices developed regionally, particularly within the nice patriarchal sees (Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and Constantinople).
Due to its proximity to Easter, the Sunday earlier than Easter at the beginning targeted on the Lord’s Ardour. That was central. That’s why the Gospel within the “ordinary” place in Mass is the Ardour narrative. Earlier than the 1970 liturgical reform within the Catholic Church, for instance, it was the Ardour in keeping with Matthew.
However, early on, the Church in Jerusalem took benefit of the truth that the geographical locations the place Jesus’ Ardour, Demise and Resurrection occurred have been proper there. With a daily inflow of pilgrims to the Holy Metropolis, they needed to have a good time not simply the place issues occurred however the broader historic file.
Egeria was a Christian lady from western Europe who made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem someday between AD 381-84. She wrote an in depth account of what she noticed and did when it comes to worship in Jerusalem. From Egeria we be taught that, already in her day, pilgrims would collect within the afternoon of what we name Palm Sunday to proceed in procession with palms, retracing Jesus’ actions and steps. As one liturgical scholar notes, the very fact this occurred within the afternoon suggests it was an “add-on” relatively than the unique essential focus of that Sunday.
However the custom persevered — and unfold. We see the time period “Palm Sunday” already by AD 600, and the follow of palm processions made its manner into Europe. The pope’s liturgy for that Sunday targeted on the Ardour. The Roman liturgy tended to be “conservative” within the sense of preserving its traditions, however the pope over time ultimately got here to distribute palms utilized in processions.
The actual fact of those two foci, nevertheless, persevered. They ultimately got here to co-exist, with the custom of the procession with palms to the church or cathedral ultimately turning into the opening rites we now see in Palm Sunday’s Mass. It remembers when the procession arrived on the place the place Mass was to be celebrated, and the actions defined within the mild of the Gospel of Christ’s entry to Jerusalem. However the concentrate on the Ardour remained, enshrined within the “essential” Gospel of the day. This twofold nature of the day can also be mirrored in its official title: “Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Ardour.”
As varied liturgical historians level out, over time the favored procession got here to be taken over by the clergy in order that, in latest centuries, the procession in or across the church was a priestly affair with the congregation as spectators. An vital change occurred, nevertheless, within the Nineteen Fifties. Nourished by the analysis of liturgical students from the Nineteen Twenties-50s “going again to the sources,” i.e., to the earliest patterns of Christian liturgical follow, Pope Pius XII initiated a variety of reforms of the Holy Week which recovered among the rites that had fallen into eclipse. Considered one of them was the restoration of the Palm Sunday procession, restored to a level within the 1955 reform and positively inspired at the moment on account of the 1970 reform. It recovered what the Church in Jerusalem — the place the place this all occurred — was doing at the least within the fourth century.
That’s how Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Ardour acquired the form we all know at the moment. The subsequent liturgy meriting our consideration: Holy Thursday’s Night Mass of the Lord’s Supper.