Blessed is He who comes

Palm Sunday

Knowing our need to see and to touch, the Church offers our senses a veritable feast during Holy Week. And who doesn’t love a free door gift, right? Catholics are no different. Today, we get to collect and hold our palms at the start of this Mass as we welcome the King of Kings. The palms, explains the liturgist Fr Pius Parsch, are “symbols of our loyalty to Him and of our willingness to do Him homage.” Thursday, we will witness the priest wash the feet of members of the congregation. Friday is when we march to the front to express our reverence and devotion to the wood of the cross, on which hung the salvation of the world. And on Saturday, we will hold candles as we welcome the Light of the World into our midst, into our world darkened by sin and death, now vanquished by our Risen Lord.

For many, these precious sacramentals were painfully denied to us and we had to be contented with the virtual experience of following these liturgical celebrations online. We could see but not touch. We could hear but not feel. These past few years had not just disrupted our routines but they had also been an assault to our sense of humanity. Seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and feeling is part of what makes us human.

But this year, we are back with a vengeance. We have been beaten, bruised, starved, masked, vaccinated, sanitised and deprived, but not defeated. Like the palms we hold, symbols of a martyr’s victory over death, we have survived. Like a Phoenix which rises anew from the ashes of its destruction, we Catholics have been reborn. Our victory is in Christ who faced death without flinching and even embraced it in a wrestle to the end and emerged victorious.

Today, at the start of Holy Week, the liturgy already provides us with a teaser of the ending. Yes, we have heard how our Lord would suffer in the long passion reading according to St Matthew, but we are also given a glimpse of how His passion is also a triumphant procession to victory: “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” Hosanna is the cry of the people to God to “save us” and our Lord Jesus Christ is the answer to their pleas because His name, Jesus, means God saves!

The procession we witnessed at the start of today’s liturgy commemorates the procession our Lord undertook when He entered Jerusalem to fulfil His mission. It was one of the few times in His life that our Lord accepted public honours. He only did so on His own terms, upsetting all our expectations of what we think a king should be. The palms which the citizens of Jerusalem held have also taken on a new meaning because of Christ. They are now symbols of martyrdom, a Christian’s true glory and honour. Our Lord received gold, the symbol of kingly power, only as a helpless infant. Now, as a man who has manifested unimaginable power, He chooses the meekness prophesied by Zechariah, repeated in today’s Mass: “Tell the daughter of Sion, Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on an ass, and on a colt, the foal of an ass” (Matthew 21:5) “He is the king of peace,” writes the late Pope Benedict XVI, “and by God’s power, not His own.”

In just a few days, the lauds will turn to sneers: “We have no king but Caesar!” A distressed Pilate puts the question to Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” “My kingdom is not of this world,” He replies. He is Lord not just of a particular people, nor even of “this world.” He transcends all that this world has to offer. He is Truth itself, the very foundation upon which the world rests. “For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” (John 18:37)

Those who reject the truth send Him to the Cross, the most ironic of thrones for the king to mount. Near the end of today’s passion reading, we hear the chief priests and scribes mock and ridicule Him: “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the king of Israel; let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him. He puts his trust in God; now let God rescue him if he wants him. For he did say, ‘I am the son of God.’” Even in mockery, unwittingly they state a truth which underlies this entire story - Jesus is no mere king of the Jews, feted by people and hailed to be their political liberator. He is so much more. He is “the son of God.” Today, we cry with the people of Jerusalem as we do at every Mass, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” He who has come to save us, has come to die for us and in dying for us, He has come to feed us with His Body and Blood in the Eucharist! Divine Food that is real, not just virtual. So we sing, “Hosanna in the highest.”