A Palm Sunday, both typical and untypical

Our Palm Sunday Eucharist at St George's this morning was attended by group of thirty visitors from Sir Roger Manwood's School in Kent. They were, in fact the school orchestra, who'd earlier in the week played two concerts in Granada, and after our service played for us in Malaga. Three of the youngsters took part in the readings for the day, and several took Communion as well. There were altogether sixty of us.

Instead of the Year B St Mark Passion, we used a dialogue version of the Passion that uses passages from other other Gospels as well - useful for anyone wanting to preach on Jesus' Seven Last Words, for example. I preached the concise sermon I'd prepared, without straying too much from the script, and we finished at our usual time of 12.15 giving the orchestra three quarters of an hour to get ready for their performance.

Not all those who attended the service were able to stay on afterwards for the concert, but a sizeable number of people came in off the street, and we had an audience of forty, which is remarkable, since the poster advertising the event only went on display last weekend. We were treated to a variety of music, classic and contemporary, and various instrumentalists we showcased in different pieces. One of the violinists is also a chorister in Canterbury Cathedral. She sang a Handel duet with a flautist, and showed that he is developing a voice that will be more versatile than a treble of either gender.

I was glad that I bothered to prepare a big pot of soup for lunch beforehand, as I was starving by the time I returned to the apartment around three. At four, I made my way into the Old Town through the road tunnel. It was closed to traffic, as the road around the Plaza de la Merced was occupied by a Palm Sunday procession, from San Agostino Parish Church, featuring a trona that depicts the Triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, and a trona of Our Lady of Holy Protection, cared for by the 'La Pollinica' cofradia. 

Hundreds dressed in the dramatic coloured garb of penitentes, children and adults alike formed the procession, and the band of drums and brass numbered over fifty people. The juxtaposition of church ceremonial and imagery, the music, the drumming at slow walking pace and  the use of bells to communicate messages along the 500 metre line of the procession, I found powerfully moving to witness in a secular everyday context. Normally, the stories we hear in the liturgy we internalise to take them away with us into the rest of our lives. Making those stories visual in public clashes our inner and outer worlds together in a stimulating, challenging way.

After following this procession for half a kilometre, the sound and then the sight of another emerged at a crossroads, beyond where the first one turned off, so I went to investigate. Coming down the hill from the Plaza de Capuchinos was the procession of the cofradia del Prendimiento, whose trona depicts the betrayal and arrest of Jesus, plus Peter's denial. This was followed by the trona of Our Lady of Great Forgiveness. In Spain I find there are so many titles of dedication relating to Blessed Mary I've never heard of before.

I followed this procession for a while, then headed through side streets to Calle Marquesa de Larios, where I watched the passage of a trona depicting Simon of Cyrene taking up the cross of Jesus, but I couldn't figure out from the handy little processional scheduling booklet which cofradia this one was or the trona of Our Lady following. Then I went to the Alameda and watched the arrival of the trona of the cofradia de la Humilidad aka 'Ecce Homo' as it portrays a tranquil Jesus bound, being presented by Pilate to the crowd, with a fierce, chained Barabbas raging in the background.

By this time I'd been walking around for over three hours and was beginning to feel tired, so decided to head for the apartment for supper, and a chance to digest the extraordinary experiences of the afternoon. My unfamiliarity with the many life sized sculptured images on display meant in each case that I needed to look long and hard to work out what each was portraying. Sometimes it was a scene combining several actions, other times a snapshot of a momentary detail in the passion story which an artist had meditated on and extracted a lesson for the beholder. Catholic tradition has many detailed devotional commentaries relating to the Passion, both popular and obscure. Giving life to them in the form of three dimensional religious art-works is a huge feat of creative imagination, whose development spans centuries. and continues today.

My photos from today's processions are here