Palm Sunday

“ The ceremonies on Palm Sunday as celebrated now in the Roman Catholic Church are divided in three distinct parts: (1) The solemn blessing of the palms, (2) the procession, (3) the mass.
Branches of palm, olive or sprouting willow (hence in England known as “palm”) having been placed before the altar, or at the Epistle side, after Terce and the sprinkling of holy water, the priest, either in a purple cope or an alb without chasuble, proceeds to bless them. ”

“ There is no longer a procession; but the palms (in Russia willow twigs) are blessed, and are held by the worshippers during the service.
The earliest extant account of a liturgical celebration of Palm Sunday is that given in the Peregrinatio Silviae (Eleutheriae) , [1] which dates from the 4th century and contains a detailed account of the Holy Week ceremonies at Jerusalem by a Spanish lady of rank:—
The actual festival began at one o’clock with a service in the church on the Mount of Olives; at three o’clock clergy and people went in procession, singing hymns, to the scene of the Ascension ”

“ It is Palm Sunday to-day, and men in churches remember what is written of the peasant from Galilee who rode into Jerusalem amid multitudes of earnest men not merely waiting for consolation, but going to meet it half-way, who yet knew not what they did, nor whom they welcomed. ”

“ Palm Sunday receives its English and the greater part of its foreign names from the custom of bearing palm branches, in commemoration of those which were strewn in the path of Christ on his entry into Jerusalem. “It is a custom among churchmen,” says the author of a Normano-Saxon homily in the reign of Henry II., or Richard I., “to go in procession on this day. ”

“ When they speak of the festivals of the Church, they include the Dominical day as much as Christmas, Palm Sunday, or Easter. They smile when they hear learned Protestant sages attempt to prove from the Scriptures either the abrogation or a change of the Sabbath. We have also the testimony of a host of Protestants in the earlier part of the Reformation, who acknowledged that the observation of the first day had no other foundation than the authority of the Church, among whom is the celebrated John Calvin, who says—"The old fathers put in the place of the Sabbath the day which we call Sunday. ”

“ The fear of man bringeth a snare. Never let us be tempted, for fear of man, to say or do the least thing which we know to be displeasing to God.
In the evening, Jesus again left Jerusalem, and lodged in Bethany, with the twelve disciples.
We are now come to the last week of our Saviour's life: we call it "Passion Week," because of His sufferings and death, which are often spoken of as "His Passion." The Sunday that begins this Holy Week is often called Palm Sunday, in remembrance of Christ's riding into Jerusalem, accompanied by multitudes carrying Palm branches ”

“ On Palm Sunday they fill the churches in their indescribable variety of gay and striking costumes, bearing in their hands tall, yellow palms, making a much more impressive sight, and closer to the narrative of the Gospels, than our colder climate enables us to have. ”

“ This occupies [103] the mind during Holy Week. The aim of Lent is not to move the faithful to dwell upon the passion of Christ, but only to prepare them for keeping Easter worthily through fasting, penance, and abstinence. The liturgical prayers in Lent contain no reference to the Redeemer’s sufferings, but speak of fasting and mortification alone. It is the same with the Epistles and Gospels. On Palm Sunday for the first time, our thoughts are directed to the Passion in the collect for the day, while in the prayers for the so-called Passion Sunday it is not mentioned. ”

“ On Ash Wednesday ashes are blessed and put on the forehead of the faithful in the form of a cross, with the words, "Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return," to remind them that they are only dust and ashes. These are the ashes of burnt palms blessed the Palm Sunday of the previous year. These palms are blessed in memory of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, when the people spread palm branches along the way. This palm should remind us to perform faithfully our duty if we wish to enjoy the palm of victory. ”

“ The olive grows best where its roots can find their way into the crevices of a rock
The celebrations begin with Palm Sunday. The patriarchs bless the palms which are distributed by the thousands to the people. Every man, woman, and child [93] in Jerusalem seems to be waving palm branches, and the court and Church of the Sepulchre are filled with green. ”

“ The phantom of the next day, with the dreary five to follow, sate as a load upon my poor Sabbath recreations. What charm has washed that Ethiop white? What is gone of Black Monday? All days are the same. Sunday itself—that unfortunate failure of a holyday as it too often proved, what with my sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity of pleasure out of it—is melted down into a week day. I can spare to go to church now, without grudging the huge cantle which it used to seem to cut out of the holyday. I have Time for everything. I can visit a sick friend. ”

“ I would use the Sunday for religion in the wide sense of that word; use it to promote piety and goodness, for humanity, for [Pg 104] science, for letters, for society. I would not abuse it by impudent license on the one hand, nor by slavish superstition on the other. We can easily escape the evils which come of the old abuse; can make the Sunday ten times more valuable than it is even now; can employ it for all the highest interests of mankind, and fear no reaction into libertinism.
The Sunday is made for man, as are all other days; not man for the Sunday. ”

“ How glad I am that we do not agree about Sunday. I think your view of ‘the Sabbath’ so entirely derogatory to all the dignity and beauty of Christianity, and I cannot understand any one not becoming an infidel, if they think God so mean as to suppose that He would consider ‘His day’ (though Sunday is only the Church’s day, all days are God’s days) dishonoured by walking with one’s intimate friends in a garden, or having tea in another garden with several persons, all infinitely better and wiser than oneself. ”

“ It is 'the Lord's Day.' In observing it, we unite both the reasons for the Sabbath given in Exodus and Deuteronomy,—the completion of a higher creation in the resurrection rest of the Son of God, and the deliverance from a sorer bondage by a better Moses. The Christian Sunday and its religious observance are indispensable to the religious life of individuals and nations. The day of rest is indispensable to their well-being. Our hard-working millions will bitterly rue their folly, if they are tempted to cast it away on the plea of obtaining opportunities for intellectual culture and enjoyment. ”

“ Another instance is ready at hand in the practical abandonment of the religious observance of Sunday. To Christians Sunday is the Lord's day, and is to be observed as such. It is not true that an hour in the morning is the Lord's day, and is to be given to worship, and that the rest of the day is given to us to do what we will with. ”

“ Jesus never sanctioned the observance of the first day of the week as a holy day. No text can be cited from the Old Testament, [Pg 87] or the four Gospels, that gives even color of authority to this observance. Sunday is a purely human institution, established by the Christians of the first five centuries, to suit their own convenience, or satisfy their anti-Jewish prejudices. As a Biblical festival, it is no more sacred than Monday or Tuesday, or any other day. ”

“ Sunday was distinguished as a day of joy, by the circumstance that men did not fast upon it, and that they prayed standing up, and not kneeling, as Christ had raised up fallen man to heaven again through his resurrection. The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance; and it was far from the intention of the apostles to establish a divine command in this respect—far from them, and from the early apostolic church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday. ”

“ Do you not love Sundays in the country, Merle? The very birds seem to sing more sweetly, and the stillness of which you speak seems in the very air. My Sundays were very different then. We lived near the church, and we could hear the chiming of the bells as we walked through the village. I taught in the Sunday-school; I recollect some of the children’s names now. Father always liked us to go to the evening service. I remember, too, we invariably sang Bishop Ken’s evening hymn. One evening a little robin found its way into the church. ”

“ Those Saturdays were Sabbaths for at least two little Christians among all the Jews, and did the holy Sabbath work of strengthening and knitting up a brother's and a sister's love.
Not even Sunday nights - the heavy Sunday nights, whose shadow darkened the first waking burst of light on Sunday mornings - could mar those precious Saturdays. ”

“ If it be asked, How could the title of Lord’s day be given to Sunday except by tradition derived from the apostles? the answer will be properly returned, What was the origin of offerings for the dead? And how did the sign of the cross come into use among Christians? The title of Lord’s day as a name for Sunday is no nearer apostolic than is the sign of the cross, and offerings for the dead; for it can be traced no nearer to apostolic times than can these most palpable errors of the great apostasy. ”

“ Sunday is a day of recreation, or should be; a day for the laboring man to rest, a day to visit museums and libraries, a day to look at pictures, a day to get acquainted with your wife and children, a day for poetry and art, a day on which to read old letters and to meet friends, a day to cultivate the amenities of life, a day for those who live in tenements to feel the soft grass beneath their feet. In short, Sunday should be a day of joy. The church endeavors to fill it with gloom and sadness, with stupid sermons and dyspeptic theology. ”

“ But, alas, the Sunday worshipper might be quite content with that, for then, instead of offering his poor soul humbly before the dear God, he would be constantly chopping wood, counting the felled trunks, the sticks, the piles of brushwood, which on a week-day would not otherwise trouble him. Prayer would stream from the heart like a fountain of blood, if one's thoughts did not wander, but since they cannot always be controlled, we must guard the church like a fortress, so that the Sabbath may not leave it nor the work-day enter. ”

“ Occasionally these people go outside to the more distant places to celebrate the Kirmess—and this is a necessity to them, as here there are no Sundays, indeed the very heart of Sunday—the church itself—is missing. ”

“ For we are no way bound to time, but time ought so to serve us, that it is lawful, and permitted to each church, when necessity urges (as is usual to be done in harvest time) , to transfer the solemnity and rest of the Lord’s day, or Sabbath, to some other day.” [955]
Zwingle could not, therefore, have considered Sunday as a divinely appointed memorial of the resurrection, or, indeed, as anything but a church festival. ”

“ They are excluded because the Lord's Day is always kept as a Festival and never as a Fast. These six Sundays, therefore, are called "Sundays IN Lent, not of Lent; they are in the midst of it, but do not form part of it; on these Sundays we continue without interruption to celebrate our Saviour's Resurrection." The Sundays in Lent are named in the Prayer Book First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth; the last Sunday being set forth as "The Sunday next before Easter." ”

“ For my part, I much prefer that perfect religious liberty which allows each man to keep Sunday as he pleases; and the recent improvement in the observance of the day in France is all the more gratifying, because it does not spring from any compulsory motive. Let the Jews keep the Sabbath as they are commanded to in the Old Testament; but Sunday is the Christian's day, and Sunday is a day of festivity and rejoicing, and not of fasting and penitential sadness. ”

“ Allusion is made to Sunday under the character of a festival, as a symbol of a new life, consecrated to the Lord in opposition to the old Sabbath, in the epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians: “If they who were brought up under the Old Testament have attained to a new hope, and no longer keep [Jewish] Sabbaths holy, but have consecrated their life to the day of the Lord, on which also our life rose up in him, how shall we be able to live without him?” ”

“ On other days the Christians knelt in prayer; on the Sunday they stood up on joyful feet, for light had come into the world. Sunday was a day of gladness and rejoicing. The early Christians had many fasts; they were commonly held on Wednesdays and Fridays, often on Saturday also, the more completely to get rid of the Jewish superstition which consecrated that day; but on Sunday there must be no fast. He would be a heretic who should fast on Sunday. It is strictly forbidden in the "canons of the apostles;" a clergyman must be degraded and a layman excommunicated, for the offence. ”

“ One must not preach against intemperance, against slavery, against war, on Sunday. It is not "evangelical;" not "preaching the gospel." Yet it is thought proper to preach on total depravity, on eternal damnation; to show that God will damn forever the majority of mankind; that the apostle Peter was a Unitarian. The Sunday is not the time, [Pg 99] the pulpit not the place, preaching not the instrument, wherewith to oppose the monstrous sins of our day, and secure education, temperance, peace, freedom, for mankind. It is not evangelical, not Christian, to do that of a Sunday! ”