Celebrating Palm Sunday while in Isolation – the Coronavirus chronicles.

Well I can add this to something I’d never experience in my lifetime – no church on Palm Sunday by order of the diocese!! It’s just unbelievable. I understand that in some diocese they are not even allowing the faithful to pick up any palms out of fear of the coronavirus spread. In my diocese, they are not as stringent. The palms are going to be put on separate tables out in the parking lot and will be replenished by parishoners in masks with gloves as needed.

There’s no being picky this year either. You touch it, you take it! I’m not even sure the virus can live for long on a palm branch, but there you are.

My parish has really been going out of its way to reach out to people and keep in touch. My pastor sends out an e-mail letter every day. There is also televised mass on the parish Youtube channel. Parishioners have volunteered to make calls so that everyone in the parish gets at least one phone call. I got one and thoroughly enjoyed it talking with someone I had never met before. My sister made 80 calls herself.

This week, confessions became available, although you have to make an appointment and to go to confession at some appointed place on the parish grounds. That reminds me of the story about Father Damien, who was forced to give his confession from a boat up to a fellow priest on the larger ocean vessel. That must have been humbling. I’m sure this is as well. Glad I went the week before everything fell apart.

Still, it feels weird not to be going to church a couple of times a week for mass or rehearsal. Mr. Pete and I stopped by to pray one night this week, but we were super careful not to touch anything. In my mind I tried not to leave anything either, pretending I was on CSI and that DNA evidence is traceable.

But tomorrow is Palm Sunday. PALM SUNDAY. I want to do something to make it special even if we can’t get to mass or come within 6 feet of a human being not living at my house. So I think we will get to mass to pick up some palms, and then try to watch mass or the replay on Youtube.

Some other ways to commemorate Palm Sunday

This is the Sunday that would include the reading of Christ’s passion including the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. Gethsemane means olive. Therefore tomorrow would be a good day to serve a salad with dressing made from olive oil, or to garnish your food with olives or include olives on a veggie tree.

Sprinkle Coconut on your ice cream or desert since they grow on palm trees.

Here are some cute crafts to do starting on Palm Sunday – Holy Week in Hand prints

And the popular Palm leaf cross – How to make a cross out of a palm leaf.

Other Palm Leaf Crafts.

And it would be a good day to record what it was like to live through Palm Sunday this year without palms or mass in church – Living through History

For more craft ideas and inspiration for the day, check out my Pinterest board.