Palm Sunday
Massimo Palombella
Today’s celebration marks the beginning of Holy Week, during which the Church relives the Passion of Jesus and celebrates the heart of its faith.
Palm Sunday is the “prelude to the Lord’s Easter”: Jesus sets out for Jerusalem to offer himself as a sacrifice to the Father on the cross, and the jubilant cry that accompanies the Messiah’s entry into the Holy City, just a few days later, will turn into the horrifying demand made to the Roman procurator: “Let him be crucified”.
A sorrowful joy, then, characterises Palm Sunday, already tinged with the blood shed by Jesus on the cross.
For this reason, in the Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae by Tomás Luis de Victoria, it concludes with the motet “O Domine Iesu Christe”, dedicated to the contemplation of the sorrows of the suffering Christ, in preparation for the celebration of the Holy Triduum, the heart of the Paschal Mystery.
The text of this motet derives from a collection of prayers on the Passion, previously attributed to Gregory the Great, whilst modern scholarship dates them to the late medieval period (13th–14th centuries).
The text of the aforementioned motet is as follows:
O Domine Iesu Christe, adoro te in cruce vulneratum felle et aceto potatum:
deprecor te ut tua vulnera morsque tua sit vita mea.
(I adore you, O Lord Jesus Christ, who on the cross were pierced and given gall and vinegar to drink:
I beseech you that your wounds and your death may be my life).
The attached music is by Tomás Luis de Victoria and is taken from the “Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae”, published in Rome in 1585 by Alessandro Gardano. The live performance is by the Schola Cantorum Venerandae Fabricae, at the “Ecce rex vester” concert held in Milan Cathedral on 19 March 2026.
A blessed Sunday and heartfelt greetings.
