The Christian believers around the world celebrated yesterday the feast of Palm Sunday or the Passion Sunday. The Palm Sunday or the Passion Sunday, the feast with which the Church starts the Great or the Holy week, was marked in Sarajevo as well, with a mass served in the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart.
The Eucharistic was held by the Metropolitan Archbishop of Vrhbosna Cardinal Vinko Puljić with a mass concelebrated with the priests. The believers circled around the Cathedral with appropriate prayers led by the Cardinal Puljić and priests carrying olive twigs. In the sermon, the Cardinal Puljić recalled the recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land where they walked in the footsteps of the Christ and visited places described by the Evangelists.
For the young student of the first year of the Vrhbosna Seminary Ivan Matijević, this is an important day: “Today we are celebrating the arrival of Jesus to Jerusalem when the believers and Jews welcomed him with olive twigs. They welcomed him as the Jewish king, and five days later they crucified him,” Matijević said.
Matijević explained that with this day the Christians enter the Holy week, also known as The Week of the Passion and Death of Jesus.
The Holy Mass is not held on the Holy Friday; only the memory of Jesus’s passion and death on the cross is being marked. The Holy Saturday is the day of silence before the Easter Vigil, which is very rich in ceremonies, while Jesus’s resurrection and victory over sin and death are being celebrated at Easter, on Sunday.
For the Feast of the Palm Sunday, the priest wears red, not purple clothes as in other Lenten days. Instead of regular reading of the gospels, the Passion (according to Mathew, Mark or Luke) is being read on the Palm Sunday. According to the customs in BiH, the blessed twigs are usually carried home and attached to a cross.
(Source: radiosarajevo.ba)
