Palm Sunday services across LI note beginning of Holy Week

Like Christians worldwide, diverse church communities on Long Island marked the beginning of Holy Week on Palm Sunday in prayerful contemplation of the last days of Christ’s life.

“It’s the beginning of a journey. Remember, God is walking with us through Holy Week,” Pastor Lynda Bates-Stepe said as church services began at the United Methodist Church in Commack, where about 80 people gathered for the 9 a.m. service.

“For us it’s very special because we’ve been preparing ourselves since Ash Wednesday to celebrate with the Lord,” said Celeste Tabarini, 56, of Huntington after the 8:15 a.m. Spanish-language Mass at St. Hugh of Lincoln Catholic Church in Huntington Station.

About 750 people packed St. Hugh’s Spanish service, with crowds standing in the back once all the pews had been filled.

Deacon Luis Giraldo of Plainview gave a homily at St. Hugh’s, calling on parishioners to view their own difficulties in the context of Christ’s suffering, known as The Passion, leading up to his death. The service celebrated Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem, when he was greeted by joyous crowds who laid palms at his feet as he rode in on a donkey.

Marta Smith of Huntington Station, and originally from Puerto Rico, said Holy Week was a special time when she meditates on God’s sacrifice of his only son.

“His mother was right there beside him,” Smith said of the crucifixion. “It gives me goose bumps.”

During her Commack service, Bates-Stepe asked the children to walk to the front of the church, where she sat and read the story of Palm Sunday. She told the story of a woman who long suffered from a bleeding disorder who was healed after touching the robe worn by Jesus.

At Cathedral of the Incarnation, an Episcopalian church in Garden City, the Very Rev. Michael Sniffen blessed the palm fronds toward the entrance of the church as the 11:15 a.m. Palm Sunday service began.

“Let these branches be for us signs of his victory,” Sniffen said before sprinkling them with holy water and waving a thurible of smoldering frankincense above them.

“Let us go forth in peace,” Sniffen said, and the congregation responded, “Amen.”

The pealing voices of the choir and deep tones of the pipe organ rose together throughout the Gothic style cathedral as Sniffen and a procession walked down the aisle toward the altar bearing a standard of a cross made of palm fronds.

Sniffen, who is dean of the cathedral, said, “This sacred narrative parallels our experience as human beings, the sufferings and the joys all together.”

The world’s present-day troubles and challenges were touched on during the “prayers of the people” in which congregant Barbara Wade led a prayer for “leaders of nations who seek nonviolent ways to settle our differences, for peace throughout the world.”

Smiffen said afterward: “We’re reminded that Christians are supposed to be a people of forgiveness and reconciliation above all else.”

Dianne Moody, 74, a retired schoolteacher from Garden City who said she was baptized at the church as a girl, said this was the week during which “we remember the sacrifices that Jesus made in order to save us.

“We all have to make sacrifices in order to be more Christlike,” said Moody, “which is what we are called to do.”