Lent is nearly over. Sunday is Palm Sunday, or Passion Sunday, marking the day of Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem, setting the events of Holy Week in motion. The Passion of Christ is read in churches on Palm Sunday, and this, together with the blessing of palms, makes for one very long service, so be prepared!
But you do leave with gifts: blessed palms. One of the most common traditions associated with Palm Sunday is the fashioning of these palms into crosses and other figures. Some folks pin a piece of palm to their lapel or their hat. A lesser known custom for Palm Sunday is the eating of figs. This comes from Christ’s cursing of the fig tree, which occurred soon after he came to Jerusalem:
In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once. (Matthew 21: 18-19)
This passage always struck me as so bizarre. It seems like such a mean thing to do to this fig tree. Be that as it may, some people make sure to eat figs on Palm Sunday just because of this verse and a similar one in Mark. They’ll be eating dried figs, for sure, because it’s not fig season. You’d think Jesus would have known that, too.
And with Palm Sunday’s close, we begin to clean. Just as we “made our house fair as we are able” during Advent, these next few days are days of making our house fair as we are able for the coming feast of Easter. By Wednesday night, all should be done, and all distractions set aside, for the mysteries of Easter begin with Holy Thursday: one of the most special nights of the year, a night rich with ceremony and ending in pilgrimage and peaceful contemplation. It is the first part of the Triduum of Holy Thursday (or Maundy Thursday), Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. And that Triduum we’ll discuss later in the week.
Image: L’entrata in Gerusalemme (The Entry into Jerusalem) by Giotto, fresco, c.1305, [Public domain], via WikiPaintings.
I had a salad with figs this week and it was delicious…Love the post!