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The Mortifications of Lent have brought our minds into sympathy with the penitential spirit of the church, and the gloom growing more and more intense during Passion Week has prepared our hearts so that putting away all worldliness as Moses put off the shoes from his feet we might stand in the holy place of our Lord's Passion. To-day we enter at last upon the closing scenes of His life. Palm Sunday is named from the palm or olive branches, or where these are not obtainable, the branches of other trees, which are solemnly blessed and distributed and held in the hand in remembrance of what the Jews did when our Saviour made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. It is also called Hosanna Sunday from the opening antiphon. Formerly it was called Pascha Floridum, because Easter is as it were in bud. The Spaniards having on this day discovered the Peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico called it Florida in honor of the Feast.

The ceremonies are divided into three parts: the blessing of the Palms; the Procession; the Mass.

The Blessing of the Palms.—In Cathedral churches the Bishop having vested at the throne in purple cope and mitre sits and reads the antiphon Hosanna which is sung by the choir. This antiphon and the prayer said by the Bishop immediately afterward,