My Memories of Palm Sundays

As far as I can remember, since I was a child, the holy week starts with Palm Sunday, when we buy or make palms made from young coconut fronds and are brought to church to be blessed before the mass. We would go to church with enthusiasm, knowing that we would bring home those festive looking blessed palms and hang them on our house doors or windows. Why we hang them on doors and windows, I do not know the reason why. Many years later I found out in a liturgy seminar that the palms symbolize our faith and our commitment in following our Lord Jesus Christ. Some people say that they hang the palms on their house doors and windows as protection from lightning, earthquakes and other natural calamities. But as was mentioned in the liturgy seminar that I attended, we should place the blessed palms in the part of our house where everybody will see it often. The palms should serve as a reminder that, human as we are, sometimes our commitment in following the Lord also withers and fades.

One time, while on a pilgrimage in Italy in the Jubilee year 2000, I stayed overnight in a convent of a congregation of Filipina sisters – the Missionary Catechists of St. Therese. It happened that the following day was Palm Sunday, and the sisters asked me if I can celebrate mass in their small church. But I told them that I do not know how to speak Italian. They told me that the mass is in Filipino and the mass goers are all Filipinos. And to my surprise and amazement, the church was full of Filipinos eager to have their palms blessed on Palm Sunday. It felt like I was celebrating Palm Sunday in the Philippines and not in Italy!

…we should place the blessed palms in the part of our house where everybody will see it often. The palms should serve as a reminder that, human as we are, sometimes our commitment in following the Lord also withers and fades.

In the Philippines, vendors selling palms made from coconut fronds would line up the sidewalks and every vacant space near the church on the night before Palm Sunday. Artistic and elaborate designs cut and made from coconut fronds are displayed and sold up to the last mass of the day. Some have flowers made of crepe paper; others have stampitas attached to it. Every Catholic faithful – young and old, line up the church patio, awaiting for their palms to be blessed, reenacting the triumphant entry of our Lord Jesus Christ in Jerusalem. And then they proceed in procession inside the church for the mass. The gospel reading of the Palm Sunday mass is the passion of Christ, usually done in a dramatized reading, with the priest reading the parts spoken by Jesus, and other liturgical readers and servers reading the other parts of the gospel narrative.

The palms blessed on Palm Sunday are the same palms that will be burned and turned into ashes to be used on Ash Wednesday of the following year. The ashes remind us that man came from dust and to dust we shall return. It is also a reminder for all of us to be faithful to our Christian commitment to follow the Lord, thus the invitation to “turn away from evil and be faithful to the gospel”. These are the same reminders of the palms that we ask to be blessed by the priest on Palm Sunday – to be faithful in our commitment in following the Lord.