Holy Week Liturgies

Living so close to the Catholic Cathedral has afforded us many opportunities to attend liturgies that we might not have troubled with in San Bernardino. It’s also intriguing to note differences between how we celebrate certain liturgies and how they are celebrated here.

Last Sunday was Palm or Passion Sunday. The service was virtually identical to the many I’ve gone to in the States, except for one thing. We did not receive actual palm branches. Small cedar branches were blessed at the beginning of Mass and these were handed out. We, the Kumler family, talked about why they didn’t use the ubiquitous New Zealand flax leaves which look a good deal like palm instead, but we came up with two reasons why this was probably not done. One may be that the flax has a particular spiritual meaning to the Maori and using them would offend the native people. It might also have been that cedar was considered a more likely secondary branch that was waved as Jesus processed into Jerusalem, since cedar is present in the Middle East but flax is not.

The second service we attended was the Chrism Mass on Monday night. At this liturgy all of the priests of the Diocese gather with the Bishop to renew their dedication to priestly service, and the three different oils to be used in the Sacraments during the year are also blessed and distributed to the parishes of the Diocese. We were amazed at the number of priests concelebrating the Mass. Mark counted over 50 priests and 3 bishops (1 current and 2 emeriti) processing into the cathedral. It was amusing to regard the camaraderie among the priests as they assembled outside. The whole service was lovely, and was highlighted by the reading of the names of the churches and chapels coming to receive the blessed oil. All of the church names were read, followed by a number of miscellaneous entities, capped off by Chapel of the Snows, Antarctica (pronounced ANT-ock-ti-kuh). This little chapel is located at McMurdo Station on the southern continent, and is part of the Christchurch Diocese, served 4 months out of the year (November through February) by Diocesan priests.