Recently, the Catholic News Agency ran this article which featured a Maine parish and its pastor. The gist of the article was this: because we cannot distribute blessed palms to the faithful on Palm Sunday, the pastor of that parish suggested that people obtain pine branches instead and call it “Pine Sunday”. This idea generated several responses in my own mind, and also helped me focus on a theme for this reflection on Palm Sunday.
My first response is a practical one. As everyone who has ever made a pine wreath in November knows, clipping branches from pine trees is called “tipping”. In Maine, at least, it is illegal to practice tipping on someone else’s property without first obtaining the owner’s permission. I hope that people are aware of this before they go hunting for pine branches.
Secondly, this is such a sad commentary on how we as a Church are responding to the COVID-19 outbreak. Supermarkets, pharmacies, and big-box stores, in many cases, have found ways to adapt to the CDC guidelines and remain open. Gun shops and liquor stores are deemed “essential” and remain open. Although some cancer patients are seeing their needed surgeries postponed, abortion-on-demand (in most places) continues without missing a beat. And yet we as a Church cannot find a way to do so much as to distribute blessed palms to the faithful in a safe manner?
Thirdly, this idea misses the point of what a symbol is. There is a reason why we use unleavened bread and wine at Mass, and not Premium saltines and grape juice. There is a reason why we consecrate oil made from olives at the Chrism Mass, and not canola oil. There is a reason why Jews continue to eat specific foods at the Passover seder, and not a Happy Meal. Each of these symbols recalls the stories behind them. They remind us why we are doing these rituals in the first place. Once we know the symbol’s background, it speaks for itself. Replacing a symbolic object with something else breaks the continuity of the symbol and the story it represents. It places us in charge. We claim the power to rewrite our history and make the symbol be what we want, and mean what we want. We stop being disciples. That may not be the conscious intention of the priest and parish in that article, but it is the unavoidable effect.
Let me reflect for a few moments on the meaning of palms in Palm Sunday. Who used the palms, and how? What did they mean? What might they mean for us?
Let’s rewind back to that original Holy Week. Jesus and His disciples are approaching Jerusalem. Jesus knows well what awaits Him there. He has warned His disciples on several occasions. They are fearful, but continue to follow Him.
Jesus makes a deliberate choice as to how He will enter the Holy City. He tells His disciples to get a colt for Him, in a conscious choice to call to mind the prophecy of Zechariah, which Matthew quotes thus:
Say to daughter Zion,
“Behold, your king comes to you,
meek and riding on an ass,
and on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.”
As Jesus nears the entrance to Jerusalem, many people cut branches from palm trees and strew them on the ground before Jesus. They acclaim Him with their hosannas, calling Him “the Son of David” – the Promised One, the Messiah.
So far, so good, you might say. The palms, then, must represent our welcoming of Christ as Our Lord and Savior. The palms must represent our commitment to Him.
Not so fast.
In a few days, the crowd that was creating such an uproar that, as Matthew tells us, “the whole city was shaken and asked, ‘Who is this?'”, was creating a new uproar, calling for His death, just as the people of Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth had done early in His ministry. Why? Was it those leaders who knew how to manipulate public opinion, even then? Was Jesus not the kind of Messiah they really wanted? Were they unwilling to trust Him? Were they unwilling to take up their own crosses and follow Him?
Whatever it was, the crowds proved fickle. Even the disciples themselves saw their faith and love severely tested, and they stumbled. Some fled; Peter denied Jesus when confronted with a worldly crowd; Judas despaired and killed himself.
What, then are these palms? With these palms, the people of Jerusalem had proclaimed Jesus as the Son of David. But, given how it all turned out, these palms also symbolize our duplicity; our hypocrisy; the ease in which our opinions are manipulated; our readiness to sleep at Gethsemane or to flee when our faith is put to any real test. They symbolize our desire to have two (or more) masters, in order that we can choose the one that happens to be more convenient for us at any given time. They symbolize our desire to save our own skins first, and not surrender ourselves to Christ. We lost sight of this as we decorated our churches with palms for Palm Sunday, or made our palms into cute little designs.
Now, what do we usually do with blessed palms once they are dried? We burn them, and often use their ashes for Ash Wednesday the next year. Can we see why? The palms represent our duplicity, our hypocrisy, our sinfulness, our desire to find any way we can to do what we will and save what we want. The palms represent everything we need to repent of. So we burn them and use their ashes on Ash Wednesday, as a symbol of our sin, of the myriad ways we have rejected Our Lord no matter how often we acclaim Him as Lord, and as a symbol of repentance and a desire for forgiveness and new life.
Would you like an activity to do for Palm Sunday? Leave the pine branches alone. See if you still have dried palm branches from last year laying around your home. Gather them. Bring the family together. Speak of all the ways that you may have failed to follow the Lord or to love Him. Burn the palm branches as a symbol of your repentance, your desire that the Lord remove such sins from your hearts, and then renew you with His never-ending love. Even if you don’t have any old palms, imagine that you do, and offer them to the Lord as a sign of your desire for forgiveness and new life.
Once the Lord has cleansed our hearts anew, we can then truly praise Him with sincere and undivided hearts!