Cathedral celebrates Palm Sunday Mass with Bishop to begin Holy Week

Bishop Kevin J. Sweeney served as the main celebrant and homilist at Mass on Palm Sunday on April 2 at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Paterson.

Concelebrating the 1 p.m. Mass with Bishop Sweeney were Msgr. Geno Sylva, St. John’s rector and diocesan vicar for special projects, and Father Jorge Castaño, a parochial vicar of the cathedral. Father Cesar D. Jaramillo, another St. John’s parochial vicar, served as master of ceremonies.

Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week, commemorates the day Jesus entered into Jerusalem as Savior and King. As Jesus rode a donkey into the town a large crowd gathered and laid palm branches and their cloaks across the road, giving Jesus royal treatment. The people shouted “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” The congregation receives and holds blessed palm branches to mark the observance.

Bishop Sweeney blessed those palm branches before processing into St. John’s for the Mass. The palms represent the palm branches the crowd scattered in front of Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem and are widely recognized as a symbol of peace and victory.

Palm Sunday is the sixth and final Sunday of Lent, marking the start of Holy Week, the most sacred week on the Church’s liturgical calendar.