03.04.2020
Branch & Light – Marking Palm Sunday and Holy Week in a New Way for 2020
Archbishop Michael Jackson is encouraging households throughout Dublin & Glendalough to mark Palm Sunday and Holy Week together – while staying apart.
Palm Sunday and Holy Week are a time when many of us like to do something special to remember Jesus and Jerusalem. For us in Dublin & Glendalough this is all the more interesting because of our diocesan link with the Diocese of Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is the place of all the action in Holy Week and pilgrims flock there from across the world. However, this year because of the coronavirus COVID 19 everyone right across the world can travel to and through Jerusalem while remaining at home. I am encouraging families in Dublin & Glendalough to do this in two ways.
The first is to follow an initiative of The Missionaries of The Holy Spirt: pluck a small branch or frond of a tree – any tree that grows in Ireland – in your garden or in the park and hang it for the week on your front door or your back door. Perhaps as you do this, the youngest person in the household could say these verses from St Matthew chapter 21: ‘Crowds of people carpeted the road with their cloaks, and some cut branches from the trees to spread in his path. Then the crowds in front and behind raised the shout: Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the heavens! (St Matthew 21.8 and 9)
The second is to light a candle every night from Palm Sunday through to Easter Sunday in a window when the light fades, at 8 o’clock in the evening. Perhaps as you do this, the oldest person in the household could read the following verse from St Matthew chapter 5: ‘You are light for all the world…. like the lamp, you must shed light among your fellows, so that, when they see the good you do, they may give praise to your Father in heaven.’ (St Matthew 5. 14 and 16)
I hope that as many households in the diocese as possible will be able to participate safely in these home–based ways of marking Holy Week.
+Michael