Palm Sunday

     For an ex-Catholic who decided to observe Lent for the first time in decades, Palm Sunday is a welcome sign. Only one week left of abstinence, repentance, penance, and atonement. (We will get to how I fared on my Lenten season when I blog on Good Friday.) Just writing these four cardinal words makes me feel I have not experienced my full measure of guilt and shame this Lent. However, there are still six days left to go.

     Okay, let’s get to the symbolism of Palm Sunday from Wiki: “According to the Gospels, Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem, and the celebrating people there laid down their cloaks in front of him, and also laid down small branches of trees. The people sang part of Psalm 118: 25–26 –“Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord.”

The symbolism of the donkey may refer to the Eastern tradition that it is an animal of peace, versus the horse, which is the animal of war. A king came riding upon a horse when he was bent on war and rode upon a donkey when he wanted to point out he was coming in peace. Jesus' entry to Jerusalem would thus symbolize his entry as the Prince of Peace, not as a war-waging king.

In Luke 19:41 as Jesus approaches Jerusalem, he looks at the city and weeps over it (an event known as Flevit super illam in Latin), foretelling the suffering that awaits the city.”

     I love the Church Latin I learned as a child going to mandatory mass six times a week for years. Flevit super illam caught my eye in this passage, as I don’t remember this from my catechism classes. Here we have a humble sentient being at the height of his popularity weeping. Most of what I was taught about Palm Sunday focused on Christ’s triumphant Hosanna procession into Jerusalem just one week before his death. The weeping passage caught me off guard. To me, it is a significant aspect of this story. A man weeping at the apex of his career while jubilant minions await him, speaks to a humanity the Catholics did not emphasize to me in its teachings.

    The symbolism of weeping is more interesting to me than the why. Anyone can make up a reason or story about the why; we’ll never really know why Christ was weeping. I do like this symbolic interpretation of weeping from Jungian analyst, Jutta Von Buchholtz: “We approach weeping with apprehension, as if it were the trumpet call to a dangerous loss of control, as if an outbreak of watery emotions could bring about a passionate loss of our comfortable business-as-usual state of mind. We only apprehend tears as evidence coming from mysterious, unclear depth, and warily treat them as if they were signs of impending or already accomplished disasters.”

    Revisiting Palm Sunday has given me a better perspective on the symbolic versus literal interpretation of the rise and fall of religious figurehead with whom I feel no personal connection. Years of forced orthodox parochial instruction robbed me of the richer allegorical context in the details of these New Testament vignettes. I cannot understand to the literal translation Palm Sunday but I can comprehend the allegorical connotation. This allows me to relate better to Christ as an iconoclast than a martyr who died for my sins. I never could figure out what sins I committed at such a young age that condemned him to such a grisly death anyway.

    Holy Week coincides with this week’s astrological Armageddon, beginning with Monday’s retrograde motion of Pluto and the full lunar eclipse in Libra on Tuesday. Sorry, it may be heretical to couple these two disparate events, but this is too symbolic for me to pass up. Pluto retrograde heralds deep psychological transformation being thrust upon us by circumstances beyond our control. The message of the lunar eclipse is change or be changed. Get ready, one way or another we all will be experiencing crucifixion and resurrection this week.