In a sanctuary full of the faithful holding blessed palm fronds, Cardinal Timothy Dolan began the observance of Holy Week with the celebration of Palm Sunday Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, on Sunday, March 24. 

“This week we call ‘holy,’ my brothers and sisters, we see Jesus on the move. He is a man on a mission. He has a vocation and a sacred responsibility to fulfill given Him by His Father to suffer, die, and rise from the dead for our salvation,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan said in his homily about Christ during Holy Week. “That’s the invitation of this week we call holy: to walk with Him.”

Cardinal Dolan wore the traditional red vestments of Holy Week, symbolizing the blood of Christ that would be shed during his crucifixion on Good Friday.

Unlike almost every other Sunday on the liturgical calendar, where the celebrant and concelebrants of the Mass first process to the altar, on Palm Sunday, also known as Passion Sunday, the celebration begins with the celebrant at the entrance to the church’s sanctuary. After an opening prayer and a blessing of the palm fronds, he, along with any altar servers and concelebrants, then processes to the altar, symbolizing Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem to begin Holy Week.

During the Mass, the Passion, or the gospel of Christ’s betrayal, trial, crucifixion, and death is read. Although the events of the Passion are observed later in Holy Week, the full story is told on Palm Sunday because Holy Thursday and Good Friday are not holy days of obligation, and the faithful may not attend Mass again until Easter Sunday, when the resurrection of Christ is celebrated.

The different parts in the Passion are usually read by the Mass’s lector, the faithful playing the part of the crowd, and a priest or deacon reading the words of Jesus, in this case, Deacon Frank Orlando. It is one of the longest regularly scheduled liturgies of the Church calendar.

“This is opening day, this is the opening pitch, Palm Sunday,” Cardinal Dolan said in an interview following the Mass, explaining the significance of the holiday and Holy Week. While Holy Week and the Jewish observance of Passover usually coincide — Jesus’s celebration of Passover became the Last Supper that takes place on Holy Thursday — this year the two holiday periods are not synchronized. Passover begins on the evening of April 22, 2024.