Unholy’ affairs caught in between Willow Sunday and Passover

 LETTERS FROM THE AGNO 

March Fianza

Holy week holidays are lazy days and a good time to take a leave from serious and stressful writing. The week may also be spent with old acquaintances and friends at Camp Peppot in Burnham where old ties are renewed.
    Meetings and not so solemn parties are held there at the “summer capital park” of the Philippines from Palm Sunday down to the wee hours of Easter Sunday. Although this time, I am not so sure if I can stay up that long.
People are mystified about the Sunday before Easter. The names for this Sunday come from plants that are used in the Catholic “ritual” – palms. Hence, Palm Sunday. They may also be any plant branch, thus the terms “Branch Sunday,” Domingo de Ramos and Dimanche des Rameaux.
    In some European countries, real palms are unobtainable, so people use plants such yew, spruce, willows and pussy willows, and olive branches in Italy. In some places, plants were called “palms” because of their usage, as the yew in Ireland, the willow in England called “palm-willow” and in Germany – “Palmkatzchen”.
    From the use of willow branches, Palm Sunday was called “Willow Sunday” in some parts of England and Poland, while in Lithuania Palm Sunday was called “Verbu Sekmadienis” or Willow-twig Sunday. The Greek Church uses the names “Sunday of the Palm-Carrying” and Hosanna Sunday”.
    Hundreds of years ago, it was customary to bless not only branches but also flowers of the season. Hence the name “Flower Sunday," Flowering Sunday or Blossom in England, Blumensonntag in Germany, Pasques Fleuris in France, Pascua Florida in Spain, Viragvasarnap in Hungary, Cvetna among the Slavic nations, and Zaghkasart in Armenia.
    The Sunday following Willow Sunday is called Easter Sunday. It is similarly linked to the Jewish Passover. In many languages, too, “Easter” and “Passover” are identical and quite similar.
Passover was the Jewish festival that took place before the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ. The two holidays have been entangled from the beginning so that the word “Pasch” that meant “Passover”, later came to mean Easter.
    For Middle East religions, they know that the Passover originally evolved from the time Moses was ordered by God to confront the Pharaoh as told in the book Exodus. The confrontation gave rise to a competition of powers between the two that resulted in nine plagues against the Pharaoh.
    Still, the Pharaoh did not want to free the Israelites so God brought down a last and most fearsome plague where every firstborn offspring in every house in Egypt would die that night except those who remained in houses where a lamb had been sacrificed and its blood painted on the doorposts of that house.
    For the Pharaoh, his loss if he did not obey, would be that “his son and heir to the throne would die”. The promise was that everyone would be safe. Death would pass over that house. So this day was called Passover.
Jews and Israelites welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem while waving palm branches, but within days the same people called for his crucifixion as they were prodded by high priests who accused him of blasphemy for claiming he was the son of God.
    Fake news is as old as the Bible, maybe older. High priests launched “fake news” against Jesus because many believed what he preached. Then after he was arrested, they tortured him by putting a crown of thorns on his head as he carried his cross to the hill where he was crucified.
    Although I know one fake and polygamous guy in a Southern Philippines city who believes and insistently announces in public that he is the “true son of God”.
    It is the same today as it was 2,023 years ago. During Holy Week, all sorts of events graced by movie personalities and politicians are prepared at the park. These parties give the week a character of un-holiness stamped by extra loud speakers.
    What one will not miss is the ever presence of businessmen selling everything that can be disposed of for profit, taking advantage of the big lowland crowd that usually comes up to Baguio. Taking advantage of the Holy Week for profit.
    Relatively, the present day can be linked to a story about leaders and thieves in the Biblical past. When the Pilate asked his subjects “who should I let go?” Majority of his people answered “Barrabas, the thief.” That is why it is not surprising these days why people continue to vote into power none other than thieves.
    The week may be unholy, still, Happy Easter to all!