Palm Sunday starts Holy Week

Churches were packed with worshippers yesterday to celebrate Palm Sunday, the sixth and last day of Lent and beginning of the Holy Week.

Churchgoers flocked the parishes bringing palm fronds shaped like crosses that they presented to the altar for the priest's blessing.

They waved these palm fronds in the air, mimicking the crowd that met Christ upon his return to Jerusalem. Blessings, prayers and Sunday Mass followed, in affirmation of the religious nature of this age-old custom.

Once blessed by the passing priest, the fronds acquires potency that even the Church has no official stand whether to accept, denounce or ignore this folk belief. The blessed frond becomes a fixture on top of the doors and windowsills to ward off any evil that would ever pass the household.

Palm fronds vendors also had their earnings as they sold cross-shaped fronds at P10 each.

Linda Martinez, a sidewalk vendor at the Cebu Cathedral, said that she usually sells candles but said that grabbed at the chance to sell palm fronds.

She said that she went out of her way to travel south to get these fronds for the Palm Sunday celebration. - Jasmin R. Uy