what exactly is the symbolance of palm sunday? We celebrate lent but I dont get Palm sunday!?
439844
When Jesus entered the city, people gathered in the roads to watch him pass by, and laid palms down before Him so that He would not come into contact with the ground.  The irony is found in the reading done (at least, we do it in the Catholic Church) on Palm Sunday..people started out following Him, and then turned on Him quickly, and had Him arrested, and sentanced to death. At the Church I go to, each year we bring our palms back before Ash Wednesday, and they are burned and used for the Ashes on our foreheads...to symbolize the need for forgiveness, and faithfullness.
695719
It says that you are a normal person and you like happy occasions even if they belong to another religion. Get it the mood and have fun and don't think about it. I mean Christian holidays origin from way back before Christ and church turned their meanings cause people could not stop celebrating.\nAnother thing is that even Japanese people celebrate Christmas so don't worry.
425131
Some churches begin celebration of the Resurrection from Saturday night called an Easter Vigil. It is not just Catholic Churches who practice this. My church has a Saturday night Easter Vigil, (which I just got home from-LOL) a "Son-rise" service at about 5AM, and another Easter Morning Service at 10AM. Our church does not make people come to all three services. \n\nThe significance of the fire is it is to symbolize light in the dark-- as Christ is the light in our darkness. At the Easter Vigil, sometimes a number of scripture readings are read, such as the story of creation from Genesis, so the light/dark metaphor is also illustrated this way as well. Usually people who go to Sonrise Services have a fire lit as well, but then the natural daylight takes over. Again, it is the same principle. The service starts in the dark, and the fire represents the light of Christ in our dark world. The rising of the sun symbolizes the light of Christ AND the Resurrection.
825545
I can't explain what happened to your palm, but I can comment on the text in Job.\n \nThis passage is referring to God causing man to stop his labor long enough to behold God's work.\n\nLook again at the verses before  JOB 37:7.\n\nThey all refer to the work God does, to the power He has. To seal the hand of man means to prevent it from working. You almost have to understand Hebrew to grasp the real meaning here. I researched this for almost 30 minutes before I figured it out.\n\nNO, I don't read Hebrew but I did online research of it.\n\nYes, avoid fortune tellers and palm readers, and soothsayers and all those. Read what happened to King Saul when he decided to trust a witch 1Samuel 28: 5-25. She is called here "a woman with a familiar spirit"  which implies a medium or one who talks to spirits.  They are in truth people whom satan and his angels use to deceive people who are foolish enough to believe them.
348411
Since Palm Sunday was so named because of the people of Jerusalem welcoming Jesus into the city by laying palm branches on the path of Jesus to honor Him as the foretold King, (this was only days before His crucifixion) you can celabrate with date and coconut dishes (dates and coconuts come from the palm tree) and  you can start a tradition similar to Thanksgiving traditions reviewing with grattitude God's work in our lives.  More specifically you could make it a day of praise and honor Jesus as it was on that day.
103369
Thank you for taking the time to remove your repeated postings. \nFor the person above me why are you upset? you got 2 points for your answer?\n\nThe History of Mardi Gras\n\nMardi Gras came to New Orleans through its French heritage in 1699. Early explorers celebrated this French Holiday on the banks of the Mississippi River. Throughout the years, Orleanians have added to the celebration by establishing krewes (organizations) which host parades and balls. Carnival quickly became an exciting holiday for both children and adults.\n\nMardi Gras means "Fat Tuesday" and of course is celebrated on that day of the week. The date can fall between February 3 and March 9 depending on the Lunar calendar, used by the Catholic Church to determine the date of Easter. Mardi Gras is always 47 days before Easter Sunday.\n\nThe official colors for Mardi Gras are purple, green, and gold. These colors were chosen in 1872 by the King of Carnival, Rex. He chose these colors to stand for the following:\n\n    * Purple represents justice\n    * green stands for faith\n    * gold stands for power\n\nThe Mardi Gras season begins on January 6 and continues until Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday. On the Christian calendar, the twelfth day after Christmas is known as "Epiphany", "Twelfth Night", or "Kings Day." It is the day the gift-bearing Magi visited the baby Jesus, and is celebrated with its own unique rituals.
208344
Dear friend ,\n      It is time that matters in our religious persuit.Because awareness of time is extremely necessary to make us responsible.\n       Lent is not just avoiding meat eating.It is the resemblance of our sacrifice to get prepared for a life with God.What has a rose or choclate or a kiss to do with our love life???\n  It represents our love.Like wise Prayer and Lent represents our wish to be with God!
159842
Fat Tuesday is known as Shrove Tuesday and this is the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday which is the first day of Lent. It's a day of penitence, to clean the soul, and a day of celebration as the last chance to feast before Lent begins.\n\nShrove Tuesday is probably the Christian festival that the family enjoys most, after Christmas, of course.\n\nBut there's more to Shrove Tuesday than pigging out on pancakes or taking part in a public pancake race. The pancakes themselves are part of an ancient custom with deeply religious roots. \n\nPenitence \nShrove Tuesday gets its name from the ritual of shriving that Christians used to undergo in the past. In shriving, a person confesses their sins and receives absolution for them.\n\nWhen a person receives absolution for their sins, they are forgiven for them and released from the guilt and pain that they have caused them.\n\nIn the Catholic or Orthodox context, the absolution is pronounced by a priest. \n\nThis tradition is very old. Over 1000 years ago a monk wrote in the Anglo-Saxon Ecclesiastical Institutes: \n\nIn the week immediately before Lent everyone shall go to his confessor and confess his deeds and the confessor shall so shrive him.\n\nShrove Tuesday celebrations \nShrove Tuesday is a day of celebration as well as penitence, because it's the last day before Lent. \n\nLent is a time of abstinence, of giving things up. So Shrove Tuesday is the last chance to indulge yourself, and to use up the foods that aren't allowed in Lent.\n\nGiving up foods: but not wasting them \nIn the old days there were many foods that observant Christians would not eat during Lent: foods such as meat and fish, fats, eggs, and milky foods.\n\nSo that no food was wasted, families would have a feast on the shriving Tuesday, and eat up all the foods that wouldn't last the forty days of Lent without going off.\n\nThe need to eat up the fats gave rise to the French name Mardi Gras; meaning fat tuesday. Pancakes became associated with Shrove Tuesday as they were a dish that could use up all the eggs, fats and milk in the house with just the addition of flour.\n\nThe origin of pancake racing \nPancake races are thought to have begun in 1445. A woman had lost track of the time on Shrove Tuesday, and was busy cooking pancakes in her kitchen.\n\nSuddenly she heard the church bell ringing to call the faithful to church for confession. The woman raced out of her house and ran all the way to church; still holding her frying pan and wearing her apron.\n\n\nGoing for gold in the pancake olympics \nOne of the most famous pancake races is held at Olney in Buckinghamshire over a 415 yard course. The rules are strict; contestants have to toss their pancake at both the start and the finish, as well as wearing an apron and a scarf. The race is followed by a church service.\n\nSince 1950 Olney has competed with Liberal in Kansas, which holds an identical race, to see which town can produce the fastest competitor. After the 2000 race, Liberal was leading with 26 wins to Olney's 24.
263729
Since like 99.9% of Italy is Roman Catholic they go to mass(church) Easter Morning. Plus they start on Palm Sunday which is actually a week before easter, or wait, I think it started Ash Wednesday they're supposed to fast for 40 days before Easter, but most just give up something they like to eat alot, like say veal or pasta or wine etc. Anyways on Easter Sunday there is a big meal served with red wine, and most gather with family and the women all wear black, as a sign of mourning for the death of Jesus. Not really a celebration though.
180285
Ah, Ash Wednesday.  The meaning of Ash Wednesday is that it's the first day of Lent for Latin Rite Catholics (Most Eastern Catholics begin Lenmt or the Great Fast on the Monday preceding the West's Ash Wednesday).  Lent is the forty day period during which the whole Catholic Church is supposed to reflect and prepare for the Death and Ressurrection of Jesus Christ.  The forty day period is mainly derived from the time in the Gospels where Christ retreats to the wilderness for forty days and forty nights, in preparation for preaching.  We are supposed to puriy ourselves in order to be better witness to the Life, Death and Resurrection of Christ.  Why so much emphasis here, well, most Christian religions believe that Christ died on the Cross to save man from the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, and so the Crucifixion and Ressurrection of Christ are central to the Christian religion no matter what denomination you belong to.  In fact, it is one of the few points that nearly all Christians agree upon.\nAs to ashes, they always have been a sign of repentance.  In the Old Testament, remember ashes and sackcloth.  The ashes still retain that same significance and are a sign of repentance, i.e. attoning for past sins and resolving to avoid them in the future.  Interestingly, not all Caholic Churches make the sign of ashes on the forehead as is commonly believed.  In Poland, for example, the minister will sprinkle the ashes over the head of the recepient in the form of a cross.  Also, ashes are supposed to remind us of the impermenance of earthly things.  One of my professors brought forth this very interesting point, most ashes for Ash Wednesday are made from the palms used at Palm Sunday (the celebration of Christ's entry into Jerusalem preceding his Crucifixion) the previous year.  These palms were a sign of earthly glory.  In the Gospels, we find the same crowd once chorusing "Hosanna!" to shouting "Crucify Him!"  The fleetingness of earthly glory.  The palms, these signs of earhtly glory, are burned to show us just how fleeting they are.  Also, the ashes remind us of our own mortality, as the minister quotes the Scriptures while distributing ashes:  "Remember, thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return."  Our bodies came from the dust of the Earth and will decay back into the earth, but our souls shall remain.
940223
Ah, the true meaning.....Celebrate the birth/death of Jesus.  The gifts he and his father gave us:  free-will, beautiful landscape, a universe that is as diverse as you and I.  I think of all these things. It's more about giving than receiving,  it's about family, coming together to share a moment in time, that will never come again.
81830
no, Sundays do not count when you add up the 40 days of Lent.  Some people use that as a loophole to take a break from their Lenten resolutions, but I disagree.  I think they don't count Sundays because they are holy days already.
472158
on palm Sunday or the Sunday before the resurrection when Jesus was going back to Israel he asked his followers to bring him a clean young donkey to carry him into the city \nfor the passover festival \nresurrection is the day (Easter Sunday) the Jesus rose from the dead \ni hope this helps if not then read the bible \nhave a happy and holy Easter weekend
1117782
well easter and christmas have sort of 2 different meanings, for catholics it means jesus and santa and the easterbunny, for others it just may be santa and the easterbunny but i think everyone should celebrate those days cuz they are fun, happy and get u the day off of work!! :-)!!  but indeed i do cuz i am 100% catholic!!
242308
"NICKNAME", who are you?  That is really wrong!  Crosses are not pagan in the least!  They are not idols, they are ways of remembering the amazing thing that Christ did for us.  And Christ DID die on a cross.  Where'd you come up with stake from?  Read your Bible and do your research!  Goodness!  I've never heard such a thing before as "Jesus died on a stake"!  That's rubbish.  I'm sorry if I sound rude, I'm just in a stressful mood.  But I mean what I say.  If anyone wants to talk to me about Christianity, feel free.  My email is earthtoblondes@yahoo.com  Give me an email if you have any questions/comments!  I hope to help everyone I know to become a Christian, and I'd like to help you too!
133506
ash wednesday is the begining of Lent, which in my catholic upbringing opinion is the most important time of year. Holy week, the week leading up to Easter Sunday is the most Solomn week on the calander. It is a very moving experience. I cry every Good Friday. Also Catholics dont eat meat on Fridays during Lent. Hence all the fish sandwich specials during the spring
849359
Its not there, however, you are using the wrong calendar.  We should really worship Friday Night to Saturday, with the Jews, as Jesus did.  Using the Calendar and traditions he used.