Palm Sunday Mass: Awkwardly Jockeying for a Seat While Jesus Humbles Himself
The person assigned to the second reading is also assigned to make the announcements before Mass. It fell to her to tell those who came inside the sanctuary and sat down in pews for the rosary that they were not to remain there; they must go outside for the proclamation of the Palm Sunday Gospel, the blessing of the palms and the opening procession.
I turned and saw jaws stiffen. Eyebrows furrowed. “I can’t walk,” a few mumbled.
Palm Sunday is that Mass every year when you aren’t supposed to choose your seat. Waiting outside and processing in as the crowd lets you, you have the spiritual challenge to let go and trust that you are going to sit where God puts you. But that flies in the face of our pride and self-reliance.
I was already inside in the front row. We always sit in the front row, at least on Sundays with my husband present. We heard from someone years ago that it’s supposed to help little ones behave better. So, we’ve been in the front row right by the Tabernacle for quite some time.
But this Mass, I technically had a good reason: I was assigned to the first reading. And my husband was going to serve as an extraordinary Eucharistic minister. We’re supposed to sit near the front for our jobs. Still, I felt guilty emptying my purse to find items that would save our seats.
“No one is going to get our seats,” I overheard someone assure another in her family. “We have my purse there.”
And I sensed the awkwardness of people coming into the breezeway and trying to remain right by the door so they could get their seats back.
I pushed my family farther back, trying to override my sense of possessiveness and consider that there were plenty of people behind me from the church still trying to get out. And we settled right next to a statue of Saint Therese the Little Flower. I looked at her, the saint I declared patron of my baptism, and I thought of her total trust in Jesus to provide for absolutely everything. She would even trust Jesus to choose her place, sitting or standing, at a Palm Sunday Mass.
Isn’t it awkward that on Palm Sunday every year, we jockey for seats and feel like we have a right to sit where we want because we got there early and then we worry about getting in the door before others at the very same time we read the Gospel where Jesus, who is undoubtedly first in everything, lowered Himself to last in everything for our sake? Lord, have mercy on us in our anxious, possessive, self-reliant pride.
Father Efrain, standing in the breezeway, read the Gospel story of Jesus in Jerusalem, blessed the palms and then blessed us to go in peace. And I said for all of us an emphatic “Amen.”