If you’re Catholic, here’s why it’s a pretty good idea to keep Palm Branches in your car after Palm Sunday. If you’re not Catholic, here’s why your Catholic friend has palm branches in their car.
Welcome to “Cars by a Catholic” where I write about car stuff coming from a Catholic perspective. Tire Meets Road welcomes any and all faiths if you’d like to guest post on any religious subject pertaining to cars!
If you’ve attended this week’s church service at your local Catholic church, you got Palm Branches. Since the priest blesses these Palm Branches, they, in turn becoming a blessed object. Palm Branches represent Jesus’s triumphant return to Jerusalem after his recent works hyped him up as the new King of the Jews. The branches also remind us that, although Jesus dies, he triumphs over death, a tenet of our faith.
Although the modern Roman Missal’s palm branch blessing prayer recited by the priest does not explicitly mention it, did you know that the Palm Branch blessing extends to wherever you place those palm branches? Well, they do!
According to “The Sacred Heart review” an early church Catholic publication that ran through 1918, the original Palm Branch Blessing contained these precious words from Vol. 47 Num. 15 which I am posting verbatim below.
Do Thou likewise bless these palm and olive branches which, in simple faith, Thy servants take up, to do honor to Thy Name. Into whatsoever place they shall be carried, on the dwellers in that place may there rest a blessing; therefrom may all that is evil flee; and may Thy right hand defend those whom Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, did redeem.
In today’s modern Roman Missal, you might have noticed that the Priest says absolutely nothing when he literally blesses the palms, it’s said right in the Missal in Red. “He sprinkles the branches with holy water without saying anything.”
That being said, it’s safe to assume for the faithful that the original prayers recited over one hundred years ago before the adoption of this new Missal, after the Second Vatican Council, still bears some weight today.
Will these Palm Branches automatically give your car an almost automatic braking when coming up to obstacles, or will these Palm Branches keep you away from scratching your side skirts if you come too close to the curb. No, not really. These Palm Branches, as blessed, do serve as reminders to deepen our faith in Christ, which, through him, all things are possible, including, as the blessing mentions, warding off evil and his right hand (an omnipotent hand) defending those who are redeemed.
What better way to deepen our faith every time we get into our cars then to see these branches as a once living reminder that Jesus is triumphant and we should have our faith in him.
So, keep those used branches in your car or house and don’t burn or bury them yet (as you should do with any blessed objects.)
Do you keep Palm Branches in your car after Palm Sunday? Let me know what you do with them in the comments below.
Source: Boston College Libraries
