Palm Sunday is our entrance into the central realities of the Christian faith. Jesus Christ, having just raised Lazarus from the dead in Bethany (which is on the Mount of Olives where David worshiped God in 2 Samuel and where Ezekiel in chapter 11 of his prophecy saw the glory of God standing), comes down what we therefore call the mountain of God so that His disciples would be able to climb to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, which is above, which is free, and which is our Mother (in the words of Saint Paul).
All of Holy Week lives within the Passion of Our Lord. We especially live today with and within our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Among the first words I spoke outside at the Resurrection Altar is Hosanna, which means in a literal sense “Save now!” or “Save, pray!”; it is an appeal for deliverance. And we sing Hosanna as part of the Sanctus in the beginning of the Liturgy of the Eucharist; indeed the end of it takes up the whole Palm Sunday antiphon, for we sing “Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.” In some English traditions, Palm Sunday is better known as Hosanna Sunday. The Sunday of “Save, now!”
Our living within Our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem is a scriptural living. And this great moment in the ministry of Our Lord was spoken of long in advance. Jacob near his death in Genesis 49 in speaking of Judah says, “Binding his donkey to the vine, And his donkey’s colt to the choice vine, He washed his garments in wine, And his clothes in the blood of grapes.” In the 118th Psalm, we hear “Help me now, O Lord [that’s the Hosanna]: O Lord, send us now prosperity. Blessed be he that cometh in the Name of the Lord.” And words of the prophet Zechariah as well: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, Lowly and riding on a donkey, A colt, the foal of a donkey.” Christ in His Passion opens these scripture passages because Christ on the Cross opens all of Scripture: He opens Scripture Christologically, which is how He taught the Church to read Scripture on the Day of His Resurrection – to read all of Scripture (the OT) as of Christ, relating to Christ, according to Christ, or concerning Jesus Christ.
Yet there is a still grander and more epic way that the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem opens Scripture. And it is this: Our Lord’s coming down the mountain into Jerusalem recapitulates Moses coming down the mountain to the children of Israel in Exodus. And because Our Lord recapitulates that of Moses, our Lord’s descent reinterprets Moses’ descent and shows its real significance for us.
The parallels are numerous. For just as Moses was on the mountain of God and came down the mountain to find the people rife with disobedience, Jesus comes down from the mountain of God to a people who five days later shouted with one accord, “Let Him be crucified.” Just as Moses on the mountain had received the words of God which were given by God as divine guidance to make a holy life possible, Jesus was on the mountain raising Lazarus to show the Church that the resurrection of the body of the faith is possible through Him. Just as Moses came down the mountain and in seeing the disobedience and idolatry was led to break the tablets of stone (led to break the words of God), Jesus came down the mountain to find a disobedient people idolizing Barabbas, a murderer, and He who Saint Paul says is the Rock was pierced: Christ the Eternal Word of God was broken.
And yet while the children of Israel were made to consume the molten calf idol they had made, for it was ground up into powder and scattered on the water for the Israelites to drink, Our broken and pierced Lord gave from Himself blood and water from His side, water signifying Baptism, and blood signifying Eucharist: that bathing in the living water of Christ on the Cross, we would be made one with Him, and that partaking of His Precious Blood and Precious Body (feeding on His flesh and blood which is His Body as He taught), our sins would be forgiven, our bodies filled with His grace and heavenly Benediction, and in being so loved by Him through Eucharist, we would be heirs through hope of His everlasting Kingdom: all by the merits of His most precious Death and Passion.
My dear brothers and sisters, our walking the Way of the Cross during Holy Week recounts and recapitulates Moses and the children of Israel: the Holy Word has come down the mountain to guide us into salvation. Let us not this Holy Week speak obediently as the Israelites did but in their lives act disobediently. Rather let our actions match our words: let us this Holy Week be ever more intimate with Jesus Christ. Let us closely follow the example of His great humility, and the example of His patiences, that through our Holy Week, we may be made partakers of His Resurrection, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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