Palm Sunday 2013
We, and our Mamelodi congregation, were invited to St Thomas’s Orthodox Church in Sunninghill for Vespers of Lazarus Saturday/Palm Sunday. Fr Pantelejmon arranged with one of his parishioners, who runs a taxi business, to send a 16-seater Toyota Quantum to fetch people from Mamelodi, and some brought members of their families who had never been to an Orthodox Church before.
Let our prayer arise in Thy sight as incense
At the end of Vespers the children were given bells to hang around their neck, a reminder that it was children who welcomed our Lord in Jerusalem.
Chyildren receiving bells and willwo branches
At the end of Vespers there was a procession around the church. In Serbia palms are rare, so people carry willow branches instead of palms, even though in Johannesburg there is a palm tree in the church garden.
As we go in procession around the church, we sing the Troparion for Palm Sunday
By raising Lazarus from the dead before Thy passion
Thou didst confirm the universal resurrection, O Christ God
Like the children with the palms of victory
We cry out to Thee, O Vanquisher of death
Hosanna in the highest!
Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!
And
When we were buried with Thee in baptism, O Christ God
we were made worthy of eternal life by Thy resurrection!
Now we praise Thee and sing:
Hosanna in the highest!
Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!
And one of the other hymns explains the meaning of the feast:
O gracious Lord, who ridest upon the cherubim,
who are praised by the seraphim,
now Thou dost ride like David on the foal of an ass.
The children sing hy7mns worthy of God,
while the priests and scribes blaspheme against Thee
By riding an untamed cols, Thou has prefigured the salvation of the Gentiles
those wild beasts, who will be brought from unbelief to fraith!
Glory to Tee, O merciful Christ
Our King and the lover of man.
Afterwards we went to bless a new small meeting room that had been added to the hall. The hall is far to big for small meetings.
Even the teddy got a bell, though some might doubt whether he was a logical sheep
The branches are supposed to be taken home and put above the door of one’s house.
This year Palm Sunday fell on 27 April, which is Freedom Day, and we celebrated the 19th anniversary of our first democratic elections in South Africa. Nineteen years ago South Africa came forth from the tomb like Lazarus. Let’s hope and pray that we don’t creep back there.
