Perth: His Grace Bishop Elpidios of Kyanea at Palm Sunday Celebrations
On Palm Sunday, His Grace Bishop Elpidios of Kyanea celebrated the Hierarchical Divine Liturgy at the Church of St Nektarios in Perth in which we celebrate Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
The faithful of Perth had not celebrated Palm Sunday for the last two years because of the pandemic which had caused our churches to go into lockdown in 2020 and 2021 during Holy Week.
Thus, it was a true blessing to see again our churches filled with people during these special days.
His Grace Bishop Elpidios in his sermon stated that the events commemorated during Holy Week are salvific and are not only to be seen as events taking place in the remote past but also events taking place today, now, for the very first time. This is the reason why in our liturgical hymns during Holy Week we use the present tense. For example, we recite:
• Today, Judas forsakes the Teacher; today, the lawless one rejects his Teacher; today, they had His side pierced with the spear; today, He who suspended the earth in the waters is suspended on a
cross; today Hades groans and cries out, “My authority has been
destroyed.” Thus, during Holy Week, we relive Christ’s last days on earth.
His Grace further went on to say that:
“Today is Palm Sunday, and as we heard in the Gospel, the multitude are extremely enthusiastic to see Christ entering Jerusalem. They take up branches of palm trees in their hands and go forth to meet Him shouting out, ‘Blessed is He Who comes in the Name of the Lord, the King of Israel.’ Who would have ever predicted that within a few days the same people would be shouting out, ‘Crucify Him, Crucify Him.’ It was obvious that the people had a worldly understanding of the
Messiah and they thought that Christ was entering Jerusalem to
establish His Kingdom on earth and override the Romans. When the
multitudes earthly expectations and agendas where left unfulfilled then this resulted in them rebelling against Jesus. Typical of human nature”.
At the conclusion of the service Palm Crosses were distributed to all the faithful.
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