The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1913-03-15
ANTIQUITY OF THE PALM SUN
DAY CEREMONIAL.
Procession With Palms in Early
Centuries. Reading the Passion
an Ancient Practice.

Looking to our earliest documents,
there is every reason to believe, says
Father Thurston, S. j., in his volume
Lent and Holy Week, that in the
East. in Jerusalem at any rate, the
practice of celebrating the Sunday
before Easter with a procession OF
palms dates back to Apostolic times,
or at least, to the very earliest
period at which it was possible for
Christians to practise their worship
in public. There seems to be an
allusiOn to the service of palms in
st. Cyril of Jerusalems catechetical
discourses delivered some twenty
years after the death of the Emperor
Constantine But be that as it may,
Egeria, the pilgrim lady from Spain,
who visited the holy places, about
the year $50, gives us a full descrip-
ton of the whole ceremony as she
witnessed it in Jerusalem itself. In
the afternoon of the Sunday before
Easter, she tells us, the whole popula-
ton of the city went out to the Mount
of Olives. There they gathered round
the Bishop at the place where our
Lord assembled into heaven, while
antiphons were sung suited to the
spot and the occasion, with many
prayers and readings from holy
Scripture. Thence they walked back
in procession to the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre, escorting the bishop,
she says, in the same figures in which
our Lord was escorted To use her
own words:
And when after long prayers it be-
gins to be about six o'clock, that pas
sage in the Gospel is read aloud in
which the children with branches and
palms greeted our Lord crying,
Blessed is He that cometh in the
name of the Lord. And straightway
the Bishop rises, and all the people
with him, and thence they go from
the summit of Mount Olivet the
whole way on foot, the people walk
ing before Him with palms and anti
phons and continually singing the re-
frain, Blessed is He that cometh in
the name of the Lord. And all the
children in these places, even those
that cannot yet walk, because they
are so young, are carried by their
parents in their arms, all with
boughs, some of olive, some of palm,
and in that way they bring the Bish-
op to the city, just as the crowds
escorted our Lord"
1t was in this vivid and most touch
ing way that the early Christians of
Jerusalem recalled, upon the actual
spot, the scene of our Lords triumph
al entry into Jerusalem at the begin
ming of Holy Week This procession
was soon copied by other Churches,
first of all in the East and then some
what later in the West.
The Chant Of the Passion.
1t is unnecessary to dwell here
upon those elements of the Palm
Sunday ritual which are common to
all High Masses, and we may there
fore pass on to the only other dis
tinctive feature of the service-the
chanting of the Passion. Let me say
in the first place that the practice
of reading the whole Passion at this
season is very old. We know it from
a little story st. Augustine tells. He
informs us that in the early years OF
his episcopate he thought that 1t
would be better to have the Pas
sion read in one narrative made
up of all four Evangelists-as a
matter of fact this diatessaron ar
rangement was followed in Spain
but the people of Hippo would not
have it. They we're accustomed to
hear the Passion according to. St
Matthew, and when they heard some
thing new they raised quite a tumult
and ST. Augustine thought that for
peace sake it was better that they
should have their way.
We may also say that the arrange
ment of dividing the narrative be
tween three deacons likewise dates
from a remote period In the litur.
gical books written considerably be
fore the Norman Conquest we find
the parts divided as we divide them
now.
With regard to the actual chant
now heard in our churches, we can
not pronounce with any confidence
when that began. Like so many more
of the masterpieces of GregoriaI
music it is lost in the mist of ages
All we know is that Pope Sixtus v
babe the musician Guidetti take the
greatest pains to ascertain the bes+