Domingo de Ramos

pensé que Roma era reliosa….

Seville takes it to a whole different level.

Today was (and still is for you American based Americans) Palm Sunday. After a long day of siesta and getting rained on I walked down the hall of our family complex and ran into one person who simply said, “we’re going to church.” It has been a few weeks since I’ve partaken in a nice little sit down with the Man Upstairs, so I jumped into as conservative a dress as I own and joined in the march to the city center.

pretty elaborate for a no name church.

The city was mobbed with people of literally every age in there absolute best attire. All the guys, from the tiny tots to the abuelos were in full suits and the girls were dressed in the most modest form of club attire.

Easter in Seville is a fiesta like no other.

Without knowing exactly which church we would be attending mass, we followed the crowds of people, though they seemed to be going in every direction imaginable.

Maybe the massive cathedral there will have mass was our mindset. This particular cathedral was so large that the general consensus was that it was most likely the largest in Europe. We have still yet to confirm that, however what is confirmed is that the actual body of Christopher Colombus is here. That’s pretty monumental in itself.

What they didn’t have, however, was mass.

So we continued on, hoping to find at least a church to say a little prayer in to (partially) earn a beer that we were planning on having afterward.

Joe modeling his Palm Sunday attire and palm.

We got lucky in finding a church that was holding mass within the next ten minutes. We entered to discover that the group of 11 of us made up the majority of the congregation. That was fine. The mass was obviously still in Spanish. It is helping me get much better at it, so I have no complaints.

We sat through the shortest Palm Sunday mass in history and collected our palms that are more like little olive branches than the palms I’m used to folding into little crosses.

At the conclusion we exited to find the city had erupted into a full party. It can best be compared with New York’s Halloween parade, or the Rockefeller tree lighting. It was a big deal.

Having been warned beforehand, we avoided the shock of seeing the traditional tall pointed and face covering robes that Americans can identify as racial hate groups. Not in Spain, everyone. This is a very sacred tradition rooted in medieval ritual. Even the little Spaniards wear them and were part of the parade into which we were thrown directly into.

And this is only Palm Sunday….

The Klan has NO originality...

From what I collected from the mass, the priest was very intent on emphasizing that being in Seville during Easter is a very fortunate occurrence. No other city in the world embraces the religiosity of the season like Sevilla.

I’m interested to see what other types of messages God is trying to extend to me by bringing me to this continent that loves Him more than I could have ever learned from Bibles and theology class.