We begin the Holy Week with Palm Sunday, and the Gospels tell us that the people spread their palm branches or their cloaks on the ground as Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.

This is the symbol the Church has taken up for our liturgical actions, and is what gives the day its name. Palms, though, were tricky to get hold of in northern and western Europe, so branches of whatever could be found were used: box, willow, yew, that sort of thing. And we see in this a central truth of our Holy Week observance: that we’re not simply re-enacting an historical event when we do this; we’re not trying to recreate this scene frame for frame. Rather we are bringing Jerusalem to us, entering into the drama as if it were happening in Ilkley, today, with whatever we have to hand.

After the blessing of palms and the Palm Gospel, we go in our own procession through the grounds and into the church, to ‘enter the city’ as Jesus did. And we sing our ‘hosannas,’ just like all those gathered around Jesus.

It’s the triumphal entry into the city that forms the liturgical focus of the day. But we also hear a dramatic reading of the full Passion account; this year from St Matthew’s Gospel. And it’s this juxtaposition of triumph and celebration, with death and despair, that makes it such a rich beginning to Holy Week. We’re brought into the mystery of the Passion that will continue to unfold before us over the week; and we see in the interplay between cross and resurrection that we are taken out of our neat sense of linear time, and into the extra dimensions of God’s time. We’re not ‘waiting’ for Christ to be crucified, later in the week; the cross is now. Just as Easter is now, as each Sunday of the year reminds us. All the events of Holy Week take place in the light of the Resurrection.

We begin with Jesus the King riding into Jerusalem in royal procession; in the Passion Gospel we hear of him dressed up in royal robes to mock him. And so the Holy Week begins.