The Entry into Jerusalem

On the Sunday before Pascha the Church keeps the Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem — Palm Sunday — when Christ rode into the city on a donkey and the crowds spread their garments and waved palm branches, crying “Hosanna!” A movable Great Feast, it opens Holy Week and holds joy and coming sorrow in one image: the King enters his city, but a King who goes to his death. It is bound to the raising of Lazarus the day before, which confirms the resurrection the King enters to accomplish.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Gospel event

The Entry into Jerusalem (the Vaïa, “the palms”; Slavonic Vkhod Gospoden’ vo Ierusalim) is recorded in all four Gospels (Matthew 21:1–11; Mark 11:1–11; Luke 19:28–40; John 12:12–19). Christ sends for a donkey and its colt, and enters Jerusalem seated upon it in fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy: “Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass” (Zechariah 9:9, cited in Matthew 21:5). The multitudes spread their garments and cut branches from the trees to strew in his path, and go before and after him crying, “Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Matthew 21:9, echoing Psalm 117/118:26). It is the one moment in the Gospels when Christ permits himself to be acclaimed openly as Messiah and King, entering the royal city to the shouts of the crowd (Ware, in The Lenten Triodion, trans. Mother Mary and Ware, Faber, 1978, the propers of Palm Sunday).

Lazarus Saturday: the feast’s foundation

Palm Sunday cannot be understood apart from the day before it, Lazarus Saturday, with which it forms a single liturgical unit. On the Saturday the Church commemorates the raising of Lazarus from the tomb after four days (John 11:1–45) — the greatest of Christ’s signs, and the immediate cause, in John’s Gospel, both of the crowds’ acclamation and of the authorities’ resolve to kill him (John 11:45–53; 12:9–11). The two days together are a bridge between Great Lent, which ends on the Friday, and Holy Week, which the Entry inaugurates (Schmemann, Great Lent, SVS Press, 1969, on Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday as the paschal threshold; The Lenten Triodion, propers of Lazarus Saturday). The theological link is explicit in the feast’s troparion, which is shared by the two days: “By raising Lazarus from the dead before Thy Passion, Thou didst confirm the universal resurrection, O Christ God” (troparion, Tone 1; The Lenten Triodion). The raising of Lazarus is given as the pledge and pattern of the general resurrection: the King who enters Jerusalem has just shown his power over death, and enters precisely to conquer it for all. Lazarus Saturday is one of only two Saturdays in the year (with Great Saturday) that share in the paschal character; its liturgical peculiarities — the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom served on a Saturday, baptismal hymns sung — mark it as a “little Pascha” before the great one (Schmemann, Great Lent, ch. 4; The Lenten Triodion, propers).

Joy and coming sorrow

The feast holds a deliberate and painful doubleness. It is a true feast — one of the Twelve, kept with festal joy, palms and pussy-willows blessed and carried, the church green with branches — yet it stands at the threshold of the Passion, and the crowds who cry “Hosanna” on Sunday will cry “Crucify him” within the week (Matthew 27:22–23; Schmemann, Great Lent, on the paradox). The hymnography does not let the worshiper forget this: even as it celebrates the entry, it looks toward the betrayal and the Cross, so that the feast is joy shadowed by foreknowledge. This is why Palm Sunday is not a relaxation but an entrance — the doorway into Holy Week, after which the services turn at once to the Bridegroom, the Last Supper, and the Passion (Ware, in The Lenten Triodion, Introduction; and see Pascha: The Feast of Feasts). The King is acclaimed rightly — he is the King — but the crowd mistakes the kind of kingdom, expecting an earthly liberator; the meekness of the donkey, over against the warhorse of a conqueror, is the feast’s quiet correction of that expectation (Zechariah 9:9; the feast’s stichera, The Lenten Triodion).

History and observance

The feast is ancient and is among those whose early Jerusalem observance we can see through an eyewitness. The pilgrim Egeria (c. 381–384) describes the Palm Sunday rite at Jerusalem in detail: in the afternoon the bishop and people gather on the Mount of Olives, and toward evening process down into the city carrying branches of palm and olive and singing “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord,” the whole community reenacting the Gospel entry along the very road Christ took (Egeria, Itinerarium [Travels] 30–31; trans. John Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels, 3rd ed., Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1999). From Jerusalem this procession spread through the Christian world. In Byzantine and later Orthodox practice palm and olive branches are blessed and distributed; in the northern Slavic lands, where palms do not grow, pussy-willow (Russian verba) is used, giving the feast its Russian folk-name Verbnoe Voskresenie, “Willow Sunday,” the willow being the first plant to bud in the northern spring — a sign of the resurrection the feast confesses (Bulgakov, Nastolnaya Kniga, 1900, on the blessing of branches; and see The Feasts across the Orthodox World). Fish is permitted on Palm Sunday, and caviar on Lazarus Saturday — small relaxations of the Lenten fast marking the festal character of the two days (Bulgakov, Nastolnaya Kniga; and see Fasting and Feasting).

The icon

The icon shows Christ seated sideways on the donkey — often turned back toward the disciples who follow, as if already looking beyond the acclamation — riding toward the gate of Jerusalem. The city rises on one side with its walls and towers; a crowd streams out to meet him, and children spread garments on the road and climb the palm trees to cut branches, one often bending to strew them at the donkey’s feet (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, SVS Press, 1982, on the feast icons; and see The Icon of the Feast). The prominence of the children takes up the Gospel detail — “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise” (Matthew 21:16, citing Psalm 8:2) — and the mountain behind and city ahead render the movement of the feast: from the Mount of Olives, where Lazarus was raised nearby, into the city where the King will die and rise.

See Also

References

  • The Lenten Triodion. Trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware. London: Faber & Faber, 1978. (The propers of Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday; the shared troparion.)
  • Schmemann, Alexander. Great Lent. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1969. (Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday as the threshold of Pascha.)
  • Egeria. Itinerarium (Travels) 30–31. Trans. John Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels, 3rd ed. Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1999.
  • Ouspensky, Leonid, and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Rev. ed. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1982.
  • Bulgakov, Sergei V. Nastolnaya Kniga. 2nd ed., 1900.
  • Scripture: Matthew 21:1–17; Mark 11:1–11; Luke 19:28–40; John 11:1–53; 12:12–19; Zechariah 9:9; Psalm 117/118:26.