March 16, 2008
Palm Sunday in Labuan 2008
It’s Palm Sunday again and this is the fourth year I celebrated Palm Sunday at home. If Palm Sunday is today, then Good Friday and easter Sunday are just round the corner. Hence this week is considered by most catholics to be a holy week.
Together with my dad, attended the Palm Sunday service in our local church “The Blessed Sacrament” and the funny thing was that the priest read the wrong gospel reading. The reading was meant for Good Friday. Well this happened too in 2007. It’s some sort of deja wu or mere coincidence. Nevertheless, we hear out the reading as no one pointed out the mistake to him. So does this mean we had attended both Palm Sunday and Good Friday masses in one go. Ha..ha..I guess not, well any way here is a photo of our new and blessed palms. Loved the blessing too as it is rather unique.
During the blessing of the palms, the priest asked us to held up the palms and he said a prayer to blessed all the palms in one go. Later this was followed by sprinkling of holy water, both holder and palms were sprinkled with holy water. Here the priest and the altar boys will walked around and sprinkled holy water through out. We were supposed to make the sign of the cross as the priest passed. Should we do this, I don’t know but I saw others doing it, so I followed.
Palm Sunday mass service was rather long today judging it from the normal mass service. Usually it’s close to an hour but today it was close to one hour and thirty minutes. During the first, second readings, the readings brought us back 2000 years ago, where Christ before being crucified, made a trip to Jerusalem. The citizens welcomed him with Palm leaves and that’s why we celebrated this Palm Sunday with palm leaves.
