Palm Sunday 2025

Would you believe that next week is Holy Week, the most important time in the Christian Calendar? It begins with Palm Sunday.

At Mildmay we have a special service and distribute palms to all present, leaving in the chapel, the palms left over, for patients and staff to take away when they so choose.

Holy Week, remembering the Passion, death and resurrection of Christ spans Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox traditions. Palm Sunday represents the sixth Sunday of Lent. Branches of palms are blessed and used by faithful worshippers to bless their own homes, all over the world.

On this last Sunday of Lent, we hear two messages: the first is the joyous procession of Jesus into Jerusalem, where he is hailed by a large crowd. The second is the painful narrative of Jesus’s betrayal and crucifixion. In this final week, we are invited to sit in the tension between the Kingdom of God that is present to us already and, that which is yet to come. We feel the joy of the Palm Sunday procession and wait for Easter, knowing the end of the story already: that God has triumphed over sin and death. Yet we wait and work for the coming of God’s Kingdom in a broken world, perhaps even a world in chaos.

As we prepare for the joy of Easter next week, let us give thanks for the steps we have taken in our Lenten journey toward conversion and for the ways God’s new creation is already emerging in our world. Let us pray for the grace to continue on this journey, knowing that we are loved by a compassionate God.