Saturday, March 27, 2010

Palm Cleaning and Decorating the Church

Yesterday, we (the staff of Padre Mickey's Dance Party), showed you how we (members of Parroquia San Cristóbal and Iglesia San Juan), hunt the wily and elusive Palm Sunday palm frond. But hunting, capturing, killing chopping and then dragging from the forest is simply the beginning of the process. Today we will show you how the Faithful Members of the Altar Guild and their friends clean and separate the palms, making them presentable for our Corporate Worship at the Liturgy of the Palms, which will take place tomorrow morning at 7:30 am in English and 10:30 am en español.

First, the closed palm frond is opened and the palms separated. The separated palms are placed in buckets of water, to keep them fresh and pliable.




It is important that Young People such as Hillary and Alexis are there to help by fetching things and filling buckets, etc.



Next, each individual palm must be taken and wiped clean. They have collected much dirt living in the tropical forest, which, quite honestly, is a MESS! Dirt, dust, and insects are all over the place in the jungle, and you most certainly do not want that kind of filth in your church!





Also, the ends must be cut.


Here are the clean palms which will be blessed and distributed to the congregation




It is also important that some palms and palm fronds be separated and used for decoration. We (the Altar Guild of Parroquia San Cristóbal) find it worthwhile to use the Senior Warden to fasten palms to pews.





So now you know the proper method for cleaning palms and decorating the church for Palm Sunday. Tomorrow: photos of our Palm Sunday celebration and the Altar Guild Bake Sale, same palm time, same palm channel, (or thereabouts).

6 comments:

susan s. said...

Great pictures! What are the ferns for?

Robert said...

I had no idea how much work it took to make palms presentable!

Leonard said...

Nice, I love the whole thing...beautiful, inspiring and ¨hands on¨ adds to the anticipation...happy tomorrow!

Caminante said...

This may be sermon material some year. I am amazed you were able to type the word palm as many times as you did without typing it as plam.

Ruth Hull Chatlien said...

This was quite interesting. Like Robert, I had no idea it was so much work.

Brother David said...

Caminante, he has a Mac, it underlines all of his misspells in red! Unless Our Padre is color blind the misspells should all jump off the page at him before he presses Publish.

I wonder who did all this work in prep for Our Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, as they did not yet have Altar Guilds!

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