Palm Sunday and Holy Week, 2021

***

We’re entering into the week of Easter or, as it’s often known, “Holy Week.”  Here are some materials relevant to the season:

First, these two items from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

“A Palm Sunday Invitation from the Prophet: This Easter season, President Nelson invites the world to remember the Christ, follow His teachings and watch the Church’s April 2021 general conference”

“The First Presidency’s 2021 Easter Message”

***

And, next, a pair of past Deseret News columns that I wrote some time ago:

“Holy Week aids Easter reflections”

“When Jesus purged the temple at Jerusalem”

***

Eric D. Huntsman offers some good information on Palm Sunday and Holy Week here:

Brigham Young University New Testament Commentary: Palm Sunday

Latter-day Saint Seasonal Materials: Palm Sunday

***

Here’s are a couple of helpful videos, the first slightly more than a minute in length and the second somewhat more than a minute and a half:

“The Lord’s Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem”

“Jesus Cleanses the Temple”

***

Several years ago, Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship began commissioning a special article for publication at Easter — or, more accurately, annually on Good Friday.  Here are links to the articles that we’ve already published in this series:

“Christ and the Work of Suffering” (Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye)

“The Crucifixion as a Mockery, Witness, and Warning of the Judgment” (George L. Mitton)

“The First Easter” (S. Kent Brown)

“Easters: The Eternal Atoning Sacrifice Testifies of the Everlasting Redeeming Savior” (Alan C. Ashton)

“The Healing and Exalting Powers of Christ Weave Together at Easter” (Ann Madsen)

“Why Did You Choose Me?”  (Joseph Grenny)

“Three Streams of Gratitude for Jesus”  (Mitt Romney)

***

It’s time again, perhaps, for one of my favorite poems.

I’m very fond of the excellent second-tier English poet A. E. Housman (d. 1936), who, along with writing such works as “To an athlete dying young,” from A Shropshire Lad, was a distinguished classicist at the University of Cambridge.  The melancholy mood of many of his poems speaks to me.  I’ve even made a minor pilgrimage to his grave.

Housman was an atheist, and sometimes a hostile one.  But he had moments of yearning.  This poem, entitled “Easter Hymn,” captures those feelings of longing for a belief that, in the end, he simply couldn’t muster:

If in that Syrian garden, ages slain,
You sleep, and know not you are dead in vain,
Nor even in dreams behold how dark and bright
Ascends in smoke and fire by day and night
The hate you died to quench and could but fan,
Sleep well and see no morning, son of man.

But if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by,
At the right hand of majesty on high
You sit, and sitting so remember yet
Your tears, your agony and bloody sweat,
Your cross and passion and the life you gave,
Bow hither out of heaven and see and save.

I like to imagine his joy when he opened his eyes on the other side.