Charlie and Wynette go to Palm Sunday Mass

My Catholic boyhood is coming in handy. We got up, in Toledo, on Palm Sunday and I was saying to Wynette on Palm Sunday back in Duluth MN we would get these palm leaves and we would parade (process?) around the the church holding the palms. I guessed that since the Spanish seem to favor religious processions they would do that on Palm Sunday too.

We lucked out and got down to the big cathedral just as they were gathering outside. We waited along the street (a very small street) and about 10 minutes later they were parading past us. First the young boys, singing:

then the choir

then the older guys.

Holy cow! It’s the Archbishop of Toledo! They’re bringing out the big guns (or canons).

And how about those palm fronds? Back in Minnesota we had these little wimpy things but there we were far from where palms grow. I never thought about it but I guess the church had to order them months in advance and there are companies that supply palm fronds to churches all around the US.

Next came the guys with the really cools outfits:

Mixed with what seems to be people from the congregation:

including 4 or 5 women in black outfits and with small black clutch purses (which we didn’t get a photo of).

Okay, it’s over so we just fell in behind. No need to be shy. We didn’t have palms but we had some olive branches that they had provided for the crowd (you can see the bystanders holding them in the above photo). We marched right around and into the church and the service continued. There was a choir in one end of the church that was singing as we came in and then the “real” choir in the fancy choir section that we had seen the day before on the church tour. Then I never even gave a thought that a real choir might be in there singing.

The choir area is opposite the high alter which in pretty fancy:

They had a bunch of large monitors around so you could see what was happening. There must have been 4 or 5 cameras, maybe more, since they showed the high alter, the choir, both from a couple of angles and other views also. So there must have been a director somewhere in a control room deciding which camera feed to show at any time, “Cut to the choir”, “Now the congregation”, “Now the high alter”, “Zoom in on the chalice”, etc.

The video shows the priest who is reading the pulpit, and here’s the archbishop on video:

And then the part I remember so well from my boyhood, where the communion is over and you know there is only five or ten minutes to go and you are ready for it to be over. This little girls needed to move around a little during that time:

The choirs and the organ were magnificent. The acoustics in the church was very, very good. It was a bit long, as it always is, but we enjoyed it.