Palm Sunday Procession

 

    My impressions of Christian pilgrims thus far has been overall unfavorable. It started in the Church of the Nativity, where they mobbed and took pictures and made too much noise and encroached on my personal space. In Russian. Even I, not particularly taken with the holiness of any given location, become annoyed when I’m stepped over while sitting in pew during mass so that First Baptist Church Holy Land Tour group can take flash pictures of the mosaic over my right shoulder.

                For these reasons, I was not initially planning to attend the Palm Sunday Procession down the Mount of Olives. All sources describe it as a gathering of thousands and thousands of pilgrims. This parade takes place every year from Bethpage into Jerusalem, following the path that Jesus is said to have taken on this day. Finally getting a grip on the chronology of events and realizing what a big deal holy week is here, I decided to tag along.

                Even more than I could have thought, the procession was pure fun. More fun than I can recall having at all in recent memory. Priests, nuns, pilgrims, students, scouts marching, clapping, singing, dancing. It was particularly refreshing to see the religious figures, usually conceived as serious restrained types, beaming  clapping sweating with everyone else. The collective effervescence was palpable.

                One group, perhaps not pre-planned, included a few guitars, a horn, a violin, and several drums. They were the most infectious, attracting bystanders to join their mob and sing along. I imagine religious zeal played a significant part in the proceedings- it is inconceivable to me the height of energy maintained from beginning to end up and down that hill still singing with full force. I joined halfway, mostly clapping along at their fringes, and was exhausted by the end.

                 

As it turns out, pilgrims might not be all bad. At least for the time being, I feel quite cheerfully about them.  With any luck I’ll be able to maintain that perspective through holy week.