Here in central Minnesota, palm fronds are part of our Palm Sunday Mass.
We generally take them home, fold them into the shape of a cross while they’re still green and pliable, and put them somewhere in the home where they’ll be visible.
Before next year’s Lent, we’ll return them to the parish church, where they’re burned to make ashes for Ash Wednesday. That’s the idea, at any rate. Some years, including this one, I forget about bringing last year’s back. Letting that upset me is an option. But not, I think, a reasonable one. And that’s another topic.
Last weekend, my now-grown son asked my wife about the palm fronds he’d brought home from Mass. That reminded me that it’s been 11 years since I made a short (4:27) video, and 10 since I’ve shared it online. It’s a how-2, showing how we fold our fronds.
Lanyards and a Video
My father-in-law worked as a cowboy at one point. That’s when he learned how to fold four strips of leather into a lanyard. Or would that be weave four strips? Anyway, the lanyard-making technique works with palm fronds, too.
I enjoy remembering where we learned this technique.
I also like the way it produces something like a St. Andrew’s Cross. That’s the saltire, or X-shape, that’s one of European heraldry’s symbols.
St. Andrew may or may not have been executed on an X-shaped cross. That incident happened in 60 A.D., but accounts that talk about a saltire-shaped cross only go back to around the 14th century.1
Anyway, folding palm fronds can be fun. But the parish church doesn’t provide take-home fronds to encourage arts and crafts activities. We’re remembering what happened when Jesus entered Jerusalem and got a royal welcome. (Matthew 21:1–11 and John 12:12–15)
More about Lent, Easter; and Jesus:
- “Palm Sunday, 2023: Holy Week Begins“
(April 2, 2023) - “Lent 2023: Prayer and Prepping For Easter“
(February 22, 2023) - “Advent 2022: Remembering the Big Picture“
(December 22, 2022) - “Just Who is This Jesus Person, and Who Does He Think He is?“
(October 8, 2022) - “Jesus, the Ultimate Alpha: a Personal View“
(April 4, 2021)
- Wikipedia
- St. Andrew
The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907) via New Advent LLC.
I’m now finding this humbling cyclical sense in Palm Sunday being at the final stretch of Lent and the palms there being used for the next Ash Wednesday, which is the start of Lent. Just like how He gets crucified, the palms get turned into ashes, and just like how He resurrects, the ashes from those palms are marked upon our heads.
Amen.
Another aspect of our Palm Sunday > Ash Wednesday > Palm Sunday …… cycle is/may be that observing cycles is about as close to noticing eternity as we get, while still living inside time and space.