The Entry All Four Gospels Record and Only One Explains

Palm Sunday falls seven days before Easter, the date this rule records, opening Holy Week with the commemoration of Jesus's entry into Jerusalem described in all four Gospels, a rare point of full agreement among texts that otherwise diverge considerably in the events they choose to record and the order they place them in. The shared detail across the accounts is the crowd greeting Jesus by spreading garments and branches before him as he entered the city, an act read in the Gospel of John specifically as the crowd's recognition of a messianic claim, drawing on Hebrew scripture's own association of palm branches with royal welcome and triumph.

The observance's central practice, the blessing and distribution of palm branches or, in regions where palms are not available, other greenery such as olive or willow, along with a procession reenacting the entry, developed as the day's fixed liturgical shape by the early medieval period. The day marks a sharp tonal turn within Holy Week itself, since the same crowd that welcomes Jesus into the city in the Palm Sunday narrative is, within days by the Gospel chronology, calling for his crucifixion, a juxtaposition the week's liturgy is built to carry rather than smooth over.