Adapting Holy Week for the Domestic Church: Palm Sunday

I have been thinking a lot lately about women’s work and women’s role in sustaining the faith,
keeping it alive, and ensuring that it gets passed down to the next generation. In many ways, I keep
seeing parallels between our current situation and the situation of the early Church in Kentucky. 

While the circumstances are very different between the early Church and ourselves, similarities to our
current situation abound: there was no regular access to the sacraments, and there was not ready
access to vowed religious for teaching and instruction. Women, such as Grace Newton Simpson,
noted for her strong theological mindset and willingness to stand up for herself against all comers,
including bishops and priests, did the work of holding faith alive for their families, ensuring that their
children were instructed in the faith and of keeping traditions alive. The historic accounts of the early
Kentucky church are alive with the accounts of these strong women who were noted for their faith,
works, and tenacity. 

The challenge facing them, which they met with such aplomb, is similar for us today, even though the
solutions we need are very different I feel this is the challenge facing us at the present moment; I
have seen it coming for a long time, in fact, but this present moment has created an urgency to the
problem that I had not anticipated.

We have to ask ourselves, as these Kentucky pioneer women did, how can we keep the traditions
and the faith alive in circumstances that are less than ideal? How can we come together when we are
kept apart from one another? It seems particularly heartbreaking this week, the holiest week of the
year, as we are unable to come together in the celebration of the Triduum. I do think that this requires
a reframing and understanding of the role of women in the church. The sacraments are the lifeblood
of the church, it is true; but women build the body through which that lifeblood flows. The question
before us today is how do we build that body now.

So, I thought I would look into some traditions and adapt them for our domestic churches. There are
many wonderful suggestions out there already; I offer these in this blog post in the spirit of my own
interests, which tends to want to imbue the home with liturgical touches, as well as my own
indifference to arts and crafts projects. Today, some thoughts for Palm Sunday:

First, even though it is already past, I thought I would throw it in: last Sunday was Passion Sunday. In
light of the last sentence of the Gospel, recounting that “Jesus hid himself” away, the tradition was to
cover all icons and art works depicting Jesus, His Mother, or the saints, in the church, with purple
cloth—this is a really easy one to do at home, and really helps set the tone for the last weeks of Lent.
Turn pictures and icons to the wall; cover statues and crucifixes with purple cloth. My kids really enjoy
going through the house and covering everything up.

For Palm Sunday: I felt that I wanted to do something liturgical-minded to mark the day. I ran across
this idea in a book, by Maria von Trapp, entitled Around the Year with the von Trapp Family. She
discusses that during her childhood, in Austria, they did not have ready access to palms. So, they
made use of the plants of early spring that were available; she mentions pussy willows and
evergreens in particular. Her family would make several little bouquets out of these plants—one for
the vegetable garden, one for the flower garden, one for each field, as well as many single twigs
placed around the house.Her family would take them to church and get them blessed with holy water,
carry them home in a procession, and then take them around the property as a blessing on the home,
while saying the rosary.

Now, we can’t do that exactly, as we can’t get the bouquets blessed in church right now, but I thought,
to adapt the practice, we could find available plants here, in Kentucky, as Maria did in Austria; bless
them with holy water—many of us have our own holy water, blessed and brought from church; and
then go as a family around our homes, saying the rosary, or singing alleluia, while placing them
around our living areas, which are in deep need of blessing as they serve as our refuge and
protection from sickness. So we have our own Palm Sunday procession!

I am including here as well a couple of links: 

Sarah Wilson sent along a link for a very cute Palm Sunday craft project as well as a coloring page.

Mike Allen shared a pamphlet from Liturgical Press with some prayers and rituals for the home for
Holy Week.

Coming shortly: ideas for the rest of Holy Week.