A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Monday, April 29, 2013

To Eastern Christian Readers: Palm Sunday Greetings (Belated) and Best Wishes for Great and Holy Week

This year Eastern Christian Easter is more than a month after the Western date: next Sunday. For my Middle Eastern (and other) Christian readers who celebrate on the Eastern date, yesterday was Palm Sunday and Great and Holy Week has now begun.

This is true for the Eastern Orthodox (in our region, the Greek, Antiochian, and Alexandrian churches plus of course, Russia and much of eastern Europe, and the churches of Jerusalem, Cyprus, and Sinai), the Oriental Orthodox (the Copts, Syriac Orthodox, Armenian, Ethiopian and Eritrean churches, and the Syriac daughter churches in India), and those in the tradition of the Church of the East (the Assyrian Church and its daughter church in India), plus, this year, some Eastern Catholic churches choosing to celebrate on the Eastern date for ecumenical reasons.  Felicitations to you all (especially any I forgot).

 Al-Bawaba  has a slideshow on the difficulties facing Middle Eastern Christians this Palm Sunday.

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