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Palm Sunday is a spiritually rich day when the Church focuses her attention on Jesus' final journey that would lead to his passion, death, and resurrection.
There are many layers of meaning to this day, and one that is not always focused on is the connection between Palm Sunday and the Book of Exodus.
Flight from Egypt
The St. Andrew Daily Missal explains how Palm Sunday historically included a reading from the Book of Exodus before the procession of the bishop into Jerusalem:
This ceremony was preceded by the solemn reading of the passage from Exodus in which the Flight from Egypt is related. God's people, encamped under the shadow of the palm trees.
This particular event takes place after the People of Israel are saved from the Egyptians and pass through the Red Sea:
Then Moses led Israel onward from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur ... Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees; and they encamped there by the water. (Exodus 15:22,27)
It may seem like a strange passage to recite on Palm Sunday, but the St. Andrew Daily Missal provides a commentary on the spiritual symbolism behind it:
[N]ear the twelve fountains where Moses promised them the manna, is a type of the Christian people, who, breaking off branches from the trees, bear witness that God's Son Jesus comes to deliver souls from sin, leading them to the baptismal font and nourishing them with the Manna of the Eucharist.
Furthermore, Jerusalem is often referred to as the "Promised Land," and Jesus is the one who will lead us to the new Promised Land of Heaven.
Jesus is the new Moses, who leads us through the waters of sin and death into Eternal Life.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church relates this symbolism in its section on Baptism:
[T]he crossing of the Red Sea, literally the liberation of Israel from the slavery of Egypt, announces the liberation wrought by Baptism:
You freed the children of Abraham from the slavery of Pharaoh,
bringing them dry-shod through the waters of the Red Sea,
to be an image of the people set free in Baptism.Finally, Baptism is prefigured in the crossing of the Jordan River by which the People of God received the gift of the land promised to Abraham's descendants, an image of eternal life. The promise of this blessed inheritance is fulfilled in the New Covenant. (CCC 1221-1222)
In many ways Palm Sunday prepares the way for the rest of Holy Week, setting the stage for what will happen on Good Friday and Holy Saturday.
