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Catholic Church Experience

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On March 25th, 2018, I attended a Catholic church service at Immaculate Conception Parish church in Fairbank, Iowa. The church service that I attended was on Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday is the last Sunday of Lent, and it is also the first day of Holy Week. The Palm Sunday service included the passing out of palm leaves to the congregation. The Palm leaves symbolize Jesus’ arrival into Jerusalem because people of his time offered them as sort of a welcoming path into their city. A practice that I found interesting from the Palm Sunday service was the fact that the Palm leaves could not be thrown away. After asking, I learned that the leaves had been blessed, so instead of throwing them away, the church kept and burned them to use as the ashes …show more content…
The priest, Ray Atwood, wore a red vestment for the mass. As the priest started to enter, the mood of the congregation was very solemn. The Priest’s introduction explained the reasoning of the congregation's solemnity. They had been preparing for the day Jesus entered Jerusalem for the previous five weeks which was a time called Lent. The Catholic church I attended was very strict on making sure that meat was not eaten on all Fridays during Lent. While the Priest was entering, the congregations repeated themselves in saying “Hosanna to the Son of David, the King of Israel. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.” Although the mood was solemn at the time, the people of the congregation seemed genuinely happy at the news that Jesus would be dying for their sins soon. The gospel reading that the mass focussed around was from the book of Mark chapter 14 verse one through chapter 15 verse 47. The book of Mark is one of the many books of the Bible, which is Christian’s sacred or holy text. The gospel explained the meaning behind Palm Sunday including the events and people involved. It also paved the way towards Good Friday and Easter that took place later that week. One quote directly from the churches program that I found useful in understanding the reason for all of the events that occurred centered around Jesus …show more content…
One recurring topic I heard during the Priest’s sermon was passion. In several ways, the Priest described the passion that Jesus had. He had the passion for God, for his disciples, and for all others as well. The amount of passion Jesus contained was so great that he was willing to die so that people’s sins would be forgiven. All of this was discussed in detail by the Priest. In addition to Jesus’ passion, the priest also discussed the crowd of people who were a part of the events that occurred around Palm Sunday. He mentioned that the large crowd of people who were celebrating Jesus’ arrival into Jerusalem, were the same people who later turned against him, and supported his crucifixion. The Priest emphasized how easy it was for the people to follow whatever the rest of the crowd did, and he related it back to our present lives to prove the point. The point is that individuals should think individually and not base their decisions off of what everyone else is doing or what the social norm is. These same people that Jesus died to have their sins forgiven, were the people nailing him to the cross and supporting his crucifixion. That leads to the term forgiveness which was briefly discussed in the Palm Sunday homily, but I assume it would be discussed in greater depth on Easter Sunday, the say of Jesus’

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