Palm Sunday opens Holy Week with a two-fold mystery: the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the shadow of the approaching Passion. The appointed Epistle from Saint Paul to the Philippians holds the key to both: Christ, being in the form of God, made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant, humbling himself and becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross. The parade of palms and the hosannas of the crowd gave way within days to the cry of crucifixion, but the same humility that moved Christ to enter on a borrowed ass moved him to offer himself on the tree.

The appointed Gospel in the 1928 BCP is the Passion according to Saint Matthew — the full narrative from the betrayal in Gethsemane through the trial before Pilate to the burial in Joseph's tomb. By reading the Passion on Palm Sunday, the Prayer Book joins the festivity of the entry with the solemnity of what it accomplished. The crowd's expectation of a conquering king was answered not with armies but with the Cross.

The Collect of Palm Sunday asks that we may follow the example of Christ's patience — his voluntary submission to suffering — and also be made partakers of his resurrection. It sets the whole week in the light of Easter without anticipating it prematurely. Holy Week calls the faithful to journey with Christ through darkness in order to arrive at the dawn.