The sacred offices of the Catholic Church, wherever celebrated, are admirably calculated to increase devotion, and render intelligible the different events of the ecclesiastical year. In every land the ceremonies of the great week which ends the season of Lent have deep interest to all the faithful, since they portray the chief events of redemption. These annual commemorations of the passion of Christ have, however, an added solemnity and power in the two great cities of religion, Rome and Jerusalem. In the first, the vicar of our Lord takes part in the holy rites; and, in the second, the whole service is more impressive than elsewhere; for the great events here occurred, and the remembrance of them is made, year by year, in closest proximity to the spot where they took place. It is hazarding little to say, that nowhere on earth does the office for holy week have the deep solemnity which marks it in Jerusalem, for the reason just given. While the rubrics of the Missal and Breviary are followed with great exactness, several things peculiar to the place have an interest which may render a description of them worthy of attention. On the morning of Palm Sunday, 1866, the writer of this sketch went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, to be present at the benediction of the palms by his excellency the Patriarch of Jerusalem. The palms, noble branches, seven feet in length, fresh and green, are brought every year from Gaza, a little city about eighteen miles distant. Tied in bundles of suitable size, they were placed within the most holy sepulchre, the patriarch being outside the sacred place until the time for sprinkling them with holy water and incensing, when he entered for that purpose. The benediction completed, the distribution of the palms took place, and the long procession began. Chanting the antiphons, the clergy and laity went twice around the sepulchre, and once around the stone of unction, and then passed into the Latin chapel. The solemn Mass, to be celebrated by the patriarch, was to begin immediately. The holy sepulchre, being about six feet square, is, of course, much too small for that purpose, and therefore a temporary altar of large size was promptly set up in front of the sacred tomb. While the attendants were preparing and decorating this, in compliance with an intimation given early in the morning, I went into the most holy sepulchre, and offered the Divine Sacrifice--it being the third time I had been privileged to say Mass in that holiest of places. To me it is one of the most memorable things in life, that this happiness should, at such a time, have been mine--that a simple priest could say Mass in "the new tomb of Joseph, which he had hewn out of the rock," while the patriarch was officiating outside the sacred place.