What an amazing day in the church! We start off celebrating Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem with song, praise and procession and we conclude with a funeral. Whose funeral you may ask? Our own funeral - more on this in a bit.

Christ, riding in on a donkey and a colt was greeted as a King, an earthly King who would save the Israelites from the Roman oppression. Little did they understand that Christ’s deliverance was from the bondage of sin, not the Romans. Just as the people’s praise was not deep rooted, how often are we caught up in our own emotions? Ironically, Palm Sunday fell on April Fool’s day this year - do we pretend to praise God on Palm Sunday, only to yell “Crucify Him” a few days later?

By default we say to ourselves that the Jews were a fickle people, but are we really that different? Every time I sin, every time I choose the “world” before “God” I place myself in the same category as the Jews that day. Does Christ want us to praise Him? Yes, but He wants us to praise Him not just with our mouths, but with all our mind, soul and body.

Taken from page 46 in the Treasures of the Fathers.

At the end of the Palm Sunday service, instead of leaving we stay for the General Funeral service, where we celebrate our own death, as Christ spoke, “Do not weep for Me, weep for yourselves.” (Lk. 23:28). From here on our goal for the Pascha week is to partake in the fellowship of His sufferings. During the Holy Pascha week we don’t just commemorate the events that Christ went through, we live them again with Him.

After the funeral we begin the Pascha service, for the rest of week, the church goes hour by hour, step by step with Christ. In the early church, Christians would take of the entire week to “relive” it with Christ. Now we pack the services into the early morning and evening (at our church we do 6-9AM and 6-9PM).