Palm Sunday

Procession around the Empty Tomb

Holy Week is upon us. Lent seemed such a short time this year. Today is Palm Sunday and as usual the thousands of catholics have poured into the City for the occasion. At 8am the Patriarch was at the Holy Sepulchre for Mass and procession around the Empty Tomb. At 2pm crowds had already gathered at Bethpage to begin the kilometer walk down the Mt. of Olives into the City through St. Stephen's Gate.

Family with their woven palms going
to join the procession

It took about 4 and a half hours for the procession to cover the one kilometer to arrive at St. Anne's Church where the Patriarch traditional blessed the crowd with the Blessed Sacrament. Security helicopters were flying overhead and there were soldiers and border police around but not too many. The crowds did not seem as many as previous years. Notably few were the pilgrims and catholics from arab villages in Palestine. They must have Israeli permission to cross the border and enter Israel.

Crowds returning home
after the procession

Still feeling weak I decided not to take the walk, nor even go down to Gethsemani and wait for the procession to pass by as I usually do the past years. Instead I stayed at our front door to greet the groups that passed by when they left the procession to go home. Met many friends whom I've not met since last Palm Sunday ... like Ayman and his deaf-mute friends. I knew when they were still students at the Bethlehem Deaf-Mute school of the Sisters of St. Dorothy many years back. They learn to read lips but only in arabic and luckily my arabic is ok enough for them to understand. It was good to see them. And there were many others as well whom I only see once a year. All in all I had to speak chinese, english, french, german, italian and arabic to them all ... and the Israeli security guys who were next to me were puzzled why I don't speak hebrew yet. Well I should put some effort and study modern hebrew I guess.

New Gate all decked with palms
and the vatican flag and 2 banners