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Palms - We can hold palms in the palms of our hands for good reasons.
Palm trees have branches that are like fingers extending from the palms of our hands. Palm branches in the Mediterranean and Near Eastern countries were historically given as symbols of peace and of victory. The palms used at religious services on Palm Sunday symbolize the peace of mind and heart that flow into us when we allow, admit, trust, or believe in the full extent of God’s love for us. More than this, the palms that we hold in our hands are also intended to be signs of victory: ours, in the reception of love as the highest good, and God’s, in bringing us into the fullness of love for which we were created.
We come to believe that we are loved not primarily because we hear the words, “I love you,” as significant as such declarations can be, but through our experiences of actions, gestures, and words that we recognize as bringing us the peaceful truth we identify as love. When we accept this love, it is a victory for lover and loved, not in any sense of one being a winner over another, but of both participating in love that is the most valuable gift that can be given and received.
As we know well from experience, love does not exclude pain and suffering, for it is a much greater and far deeper reality than the delightful feelings that sometimes accompany love. Palm Sunday celebrations deal directly with this mystery, engaging participants in the joy of a crowd welcoming Jesus as a hero of healing and truth-teaching, and then the compassion of hearers listening to the story of the same hero who bears torture and death as the price of absolute commitment to love.
Peace and victory are not immediately evident in Palm Sunday services, but neither are they in everyday annoyances and sometimes heavy burdens of responsibility such as caregiving, personal illnesses, diminishment, heartbreaks, and mental or emotional crises that occur in our lives and in those of people all over the world. The range of suffering and pain that can touch any of us at times is vast, yet it is not even close to the overwhelming power of love.
The events that are commemorated from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday will, if we allow ourselves to enter them with open and compassionate hearts, bring us into an affective understanding of how suffering, even unto death, is not in opposition to love, but a context in which the only way forward is love.
God who is love, suffered with us and for us, in Jesus, and still does today.
Last Updated 3/28/2026