De liturgie van de Palmzondag

Abstract

This study did not strive after yet another study of the Sunday of the palms, it focuses on the code (the 'ideology') of this liturgy in the Roman Missal of 1970 in order to uncover the theological quality of the ritual. The M(issale) R(omanum) 1970 provides a ritual of procession and Eucharist, which interprets Jesus' entrance in the Holy City as an messianic event. His triumphal entrance is the icon of the messianic event of Jesus' victorious resurrection from death. The liturgy celebrates his paschal mystery and Jesus is called King, Kurios, Triumpher. The MR 1970 is traditional but has purified the ritual: suspicious elements have been taken away (apotropheic practice, liturgical drama, 'semipelagian' statements). What remains is a liturgical ritual with one single interpretant: Jesus is the messianic King, who is the Son of God and Saviour of the world: He alone. The new liturgy is a consistently sustained example of 'christononism'. His paschal mystery is the predominant paradigm of this liturgy and of the Easter-liturgy as a whole. Therefore its impact is a-historical. Likewise the ritual of the procession, though communitarian in framework, does not invite the faithful to participate in it: the outlook of the ritual is stiff and clerical. In this respect the new ritual for Palm Sunday (Alternative Services) seems to be more reliable: it commemorates Jesus as the prophet, who has been welcomed in and is expelled out of the city. The theological implications of the new roman ritual are many; we mention only three of them. First: its so called christomonism is exclusive. He who is homoousios with the Father is the unique Redeemer who alone reconciles man with God by his death and resurrection. For that reason the procession has to be a triumphant, 'curial' welcome. This liturgy is 'Herscherkult'. Secondly: from the beginning up till now the liturgy of Easter, that of Palm Sunday included, has been implicated in the christian prejudice towards the jewish people which is held responsible for the 'murder' of the Son of God ('scelus judaicus'). So the christian commemoration of the paschal mystery has a connotation of resentment and in this respect the liturgy urgently needs a hermeneutic re-interpretation. Thirdly: the liturgy of MR 1970 is not less clerical when compared with the Tridentine ritual. On the contrary, all popular elements have been taken away. In his book 'The cult of the saints' Peter Brown gives a definition of 'popular' in this way: 'the ability of the few to mobilize the support of the many'(48). As such the ritual arrangement of the Palm Sunday-liturgy in MR 1970 can hardly succeed in mobilizing the faithful, except maybe the children, acting as the 'pueri hebraeorum'.