Buona Palma

I do not know the history behind this, but, in Italy, Palm Sunday is a major feast, with much good food, family visiting and the like. (In fact, I know of no other country where many women actually are named Palma.) I well remember, in my childhood, when we made the rounds of visits (to the living relatives, but also to where the deceased were buried.) It was the custom to present everyone whom one met with a piece of palm.

Sadly, the fate of my current palm is bleak. Mirielle (my cat) has a great affection for palm... and already chewed the piece I placed behind the crucifix, so I must hide it in the drawer once again.

I cry (from being moved, not sad) a great deal during Holy Week. It is a very special time for me, when I immerse myself in the services (renaissance or mediaeval Masses preferred.) There was a period, some years back, when I had a great anxiety about attending church (odd, for one who'd been a daily communicant from adolescence.) I would love to say my first day 'back' was, perhaps, Pentecost or Easter - but, as it happened, it was a 12-to-3 service on Good Friday. And, no, it was not the 'community celebrating itself.' I blush to admit this, but God works as he will - and what drew me back was not only my faith but love from several special friends who encouraged me - and music! Dignified liturgy and music will keep me when nothing else can.

However, Holy Week is no time for a pure sermon on the aesthetic. I was in tears this morning, during the procession, seeing the cross decorated with palm, and the palm branches we raised, and hearing "All Glory, Laud, and Honour." Throughout the Eucharist and Evensong today, I kept thinking, "Hosanna to the Son of David!" And the warm tears returned - to think we've been singing this for 2,000 years, about one whom John Dominic Crossan (whom I rarely quote!) aptly terms a 'peasant, nuisance nobody.'

John (my favourite gospel) leaves us with the picture that a crowd, thrilled by the raising of Lazarus, hailed Jesus as He entered Jerusalem. It all is rather exciting. My cynical side reminds me that the apostles would have been careful to be in the limelight - even if they'd all run in fear a few days later. And I'm afraid, knowing human nature as I do, that I'm all too aware that the same people who called out "Hosanna" probably were the same ones soon to be yelling "Crucify him."

Holy Week makes everything so vivid (when the liturgy is well done.) I'll go on weeping - through Tenebrae, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday - and cry the most during the Easter Vigil. It has been decades during which I've sat in dark churches, hearing the history of salvation, but I never fail to have tears rolling down my cheeks when we cry out "Christ is Risen!"

I'm wondering what would make me enter anything on the blog about my tendency to cry during Holy Week. I suppose because my recent tears are from being moved, and from gratitude. In the days when the liturgy was poor - and centred more on 'us' - it was plain torture for me. So, if anything, this blog is begging for dignity in liturgy - and music that is not mediocre. Worship deserves more than that.