Day 3 of the Novena to Our Lady of Sorrows
May you have a Blessed Palm Sunday
We continue our 9 day Novena to Our Lady of Sorrows which commenced on the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows and will conclude on Holy Saturday. We are praying for the following intentions:
The repose of the soul of the recently deceased, Fr. Paul Mangiafico
reparation for all blasphemies against Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament
reparation for all blasphemies against the Blessed Virgin Mary
The Feast of the Seven Sorrows in September is devoted to all of her Seven Sorrows; the feast today focuses more specifically the last four of those -- i.e., on what she suffered during Passiontide. In other words, the feeling of the day is akin to what one feels when looking at Michelangelo's Pieta: we imagine Our Lady watching her Son enduring His betrayal, His arrest, His torture, His crucifixion, His death, and His burial.1
Most Blessed and afflicted Virgin, Queen of Martyrs, who didst stand generously beneath the cross, beholding the agony of thy dying Son; by the sword of sorrow which then pierced thy soul, by the sufferings of thy sorrowful life, by the unutterable joy which now more than repays thee for them; look down with a mother’s pity and tenderness, as I kneel before thee to compassionate thy sorrows, and to lay my petition with childlike confidence in thy wounded heart. I beg of thee, O my Mother, to plead continually for me with thy Son, since He can refuse thee nothing, and through the merits of His most sacred Passion and Death, together with thy own sufferings at the foot of the cross, so to touch His Sacred Heart, that I may obtain my request,
Here pause and name the favours which you are asking Our Sorrowful Mother to obtain for you through this Novena. (Let your secondary intention be to pray for the intentions of all the people making this Novena})
For to whom shall I fly in my wants and miseries, if not to thee, O Mother of mercy, who, having so deeply drunk the chalice of thy Son, canst most pity us poor exiles, still doomed to sigh in this vale of tears? Offer to Jesus but one drop of His Precious Blood, but one pang of His adorable Heart; remind Him that thou art our life, our sweetness, and our hope, and thou wilt obtain what I ask, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Hail Mary, Virgin Most Sorrowful, pray for us (seven times)
Today, this "Second Sunday of the Passion," is the memorial of Christ's "triumphant," but misunderstood, entry into Jerusalem, the day that begins Holy Week. This entry into Jerusalem -- through the Golden Gate where His grandparents, St. Joachim and St. Anne met up before Our Lady was conceived -- is seen as the prophetic fulfillment of Zacharias 9:9-10 :
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion, shout for joy, O daughter of Jerusalem: BEHOLD THY KING will come to thee, the just and saviour: he is poor, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. And I will destroy the chariot out of Ephraim, and the horse out of Jerusalem, and the bow for war shall be broken: and he shall speak peace to the Gentiles, and his power shall be from sea to sea, and from the rivers even to the end of the earth.
Before the Mass is the Blessing of the Palms, which includes an Antiphon, Psalms, and Gospel reading. Then comes the Procession with hymns, when we carry the palms either around the church or outside, weather permitting, and then the Mass, during which there is a very long reading sung in 3 parts by 3 deacons (or priest and deacons such as the case may be) -- a long recitation of the Passion, including Matthew 26:36-75 and Matthew 27:1-60. Prepare for a very long Mass!
Carrying palms (or olive or willow branches, etc., if palms aren't available) in procession goes way back into the Old Testament, where it was not only approved but commanded by God at the very foundation of the Old Testament religion. In the fall of the year, after the harvest, when the people gathered for the Feast of Tabernacles God said in Leviticus 23:40:
And you shall take to you on the first day the fruits of the fairest tree, and branches of palm trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook: And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God.
Again we read of palms in the II Machabees 10:6-8:
And they kept eight days with joy, after the manner of the feast of the tabernacles, remembering that not long before they had kept the feast of the tabernacles when they were in the mountains, and in dens like wild beasts. Therefore they now carried boughs and green branches and palms, for him that had given them good success in cleansing his place. And they ordained by a common statute, and decree, that all the nation of the Jews should keep those days every year.
And in the 7th chapter of the Apocalypse, we see that those who were "sealed" are seen by John carrying palms:
Apocalypse 7:9-10:
After this, I saw a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and in sight of the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands. And they cried with a loud voice, saying: Salvation to our God, who sitteth upon the throne and to the Lamb.
The palms are blessed before the High Mass today. Vested in red cope and standing at the Epistle side of the Altar, the priest recites a short prayer, and then reads a lesson from the book of Exodus which tells of the children of Israel coming to Elim on their way to the Promised Land, where they found a fountain and seventy palm trees. It was at Elim that God sent them manna.2
Did you know the state of Florida was named for Palm Sunday?
Upon arrival Ponce de León named the territory “La Florida” in honor of the Catholic feast they were celebrating, Pascua Florida (literally meaning “Flowery Easter”). According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, this was a reference to Palm Sunday, “[b]ecause every great feast was in some way a remembrance of the resurrection of Christ and was in consequence called Pascha, we find the names Pascha floridum, in French Pâques fleuries, in Spanish Pascua florida.”3
https://fisheaters.com/customslent10.html
https://fisheaters.com/customslent11.html
https://aleteia.org/2017/04/09/did-you-know-the-state-of-florida-was-named-for-palm-sunday