Palm Sunday commemorates Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem one week before His resurrection. The crowds greeted Him with palm branches and shouts of “Hosanna,” hailing Him as the Messiah-King who’d come to save them. We celebrate this feast on the Sunday before Pascha, and it marks the beginning of Holy Week.
But here’s the thing about Palm Sunday in the Orthodox Church. It’s not just a happy parade before everything goes wrong. The joy and the suffering are woven together from the start. We’re celebrating Christ’s kingship while knowing exactly where He’s headed: to the Cross. The palms we wave are for a King whose throne will be wood and nails.
From Death to Life to Death to Life
Palm Sunday doesn’t make sense without what happens the day before. On Lazarus Saturday, we celebrate Christ raising His friend from the dead after four days in the tomb. That miracle is what sets everything in motion. The crowds in Jerusalem had heard about it. They knew this rabbi from Nazareth had power over death itself.
So when Jesus rides into the city on a donkey, they lose their minds with excitement. They throw down their cloaks. They cut palm branches and wave them like we’d wave flags at a parade. They shout words from Psalm 118: “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” They think liberation has arrived.
And they’re right. Just not the way they expect.
What We Do on Palm Sunday
Walk into most Antiochian parishes on Palm Sunday and you’ll see palms everywhere. We bless them during the service, usually at the end of Orthros or before the Liturgy begins. The priest says prayers over them, and then we distribute them to everyone. Kids especially love this part. In many parishes, after the Divine Liturgy, we process around the church or the property, palms in hand, re-enacting that entrance into Jerusalem.
Some Antiochian families keep an Arabic tradition of decorating candles with flowers and holding them alongside the palms. If you can’t get actual palm branches in Southeast Texas (and let’s be honest, they’re not exactly native to Beaumont), we use whatever’s available: olive branches if someone’s got a tree, pussy willows, even local greenery. The point isn’t the specific plant. It’s the act of greeting Christ as King.
The hymns we sing are stunning. The Troparion for the day ties everything together: “By raising Lazarus from the dead before Your Passion, You confirmed the universal Resurrection, O Christ God.” See? Lazarus, the Passion, the Resurrection, it’s all one movement. We’re not celebrating these events in isolation. We’re standing inside the entire story of our salvation.
The Hinge Between Lent and Holy Week
Palm Sunday is the last day of Great Lent and the first day of Holy Week. It’s a hinge. We’ve been fasting for weeks, and now we’re about to enter the most intense week of the Church year. The services change. The hymns change. Everything shifts.
That night, Sunday evening, many parishes serve the Bridegroom Orthros, beginning the Holy Week services. The tone becomes more somber. We start singing about the betrayal, the trial, the Cross. The joy of Palm Sunday doesn’t disappear, but it deepens into something more serious and real.
And that’s exactly how it should be. Because Christ’s kingship isn’t about earthly power or military victory. It’s about a King who defeats death by dying, who wins by losing, who saves the world by being lifted up on a Cross. The crowds on Palm Sunday didn’t understand that yet. By Friday, most of them would be gone. But we stand on the other side of the Resurrection, so we can hold both the joy and the suffering together.
Why This Matters for You
If you’re new to Orthodoxy, Palm Sunday might feel strange at first. We’re celebrating, but there’s this undercurrent of sadness. We’re waving palms and singing “Hosanna,” but we’re also preparing for the Crucifixion. It can seem contradictory.
But that’s the Christian life. We’re always living in this tension between the Cross and the Resurrection, between suffering and joy, between the already and the not yet. Palm Sunday teaches us to hold both. Christ is King right now. He’s also the suffering servant. Both are true.
Come to the service. Take a palm. Join the procession if your parish has one. Let your kids wave the branches and make noise. And then stay for Holy Week. Don’t just show up on Palm Sunday and disappear until Pascha. Walk with Christ through the betrayal, the trial, the Cross, the tomb. That’s where the palms are leading us. That’s where the King is going. And that’s where we find out what His kingdom is really about.
