Hossana! Blessed is He Who Comes in The Name of The Lord

HOLY WEEK
HOMILY FOR PALM SUNDAY 20TH MARCH, 2016. YEAR C.

SCRIPTURE READING:
R1. Is. 50:4-7
Ps. 22:8-9.17-18a. 19-20.23-24 (R. 2a);
R2. Phil. 2:6-11; Accl; Phil. 2:8b-9.
Gospel Luke 22:14-23:56.

Preamble:

Dear friends please repeat these words after me;
Stay with me Lord Jesus, as I give you my mind, may your word never depart from me.
Stay with me Lord Jesus, as I give you my ears, help me listen and obey your voice.
Stay with me Lord Jesus, as I give you my heart, help me welcome you always.
Holy Spirit, rekindle in me the fire of your love. Amen.

Beloved in Christ, with the celebration of today’s liturgy we have begun in earnest the Holy week- a period of intense prayer, reflections and a reliving of the passion, death and resurrection of the only begotten Son of God. An event so tragic but ended in victory over sin and death.

An event that has changed the cause of history, which has become the glorious song of the Christian people, the joy of salvation captured in the great act of the son of God. May his name be praised both now and forever. Amen.

Jesus in the course of his public ministry celebrated three Passover feasts. St. John’s Gospel gives us an idea of this truth. The First, is linked to the cleansing of the temple (cf. John 2:13-25).

The Second is the Passover of the multiplication of the loaves (John 6:4), and finally the third is the Passover of his death and resurrection (John 12:1, 13:1) which became “his” great Passover, the basis for the Christian celebration of Easter, the Christian Passover-that which we have begun to celebrate with the liturgy of today.

Today’s celebration is remarkable in the sense that it speaks of an ascent (going up)-which is both internal (which is Jesus’ self offering) and external (which is the going up to Jerusalem to be handed over to the Jewish authority in fulfillment of the prophecies foretold). It speaks about the ultimate goal of Jesus’ self offering on the cross, which replaces the old sacrifices of killing lambs for the atonement of sin; it is the ascent that the Letter to the Hebrews describes as going up, not to a sanctuary made by human hands, but to heaven itself, into the presence of God-Hebrews 9:24.

This going up into God’s presence is made through the cross-it is the going up towards “loving to the end” John 13:1, which is the real mountain of God.

Of course the immediate goal of Jesus’ pilgrim journey is Jerusalem, the Holy city with its temple, and the Passover of the Jews, as the gospel of John calls it (John 2:13). Jesus had set out with the Twelve, but they were gradually joined by an ever-increasing crowd of pilgrims. The gospel account of Matthew and Mark tell us that as he was leaving Jericho there was already “a great multitude” following Jesus. (cf. Matt. 20:29; Mk 10:46).

An incident occurred as Jesus moved with his disciples which focused the attention of the crowd upon Jesus and that was the healing of Bartimaeus who sat along the path of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem.

Having discovered that Jesus was among the pilgrim, he cries out consistently: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Mk 10:47). People try to calm him down, but it was a useless venture, finally Jesus called him over. To his plea, “Master, let me receive my sight”, Jesus replied, “Go your way; your faith has made you well.”

Bartimaeus could see again, “and he followed Jesus on the way” (Mk 10:48-52).

Now that he could see, he became a fellow pilgrim on the way to Jerusalem. The Davidic theme (that is, the son of David) and the accompanying Messianic hope (as the redeemer) now spread to the crowd as they began to ponder: is it possible that this Jesus, with whom they were walking, might actually be the new David for whom they were waiting? As he made his entrance into the Holy City, had the hour come when he would re-establish the Davidic kingdom?

The preparations that Jesus makes with his disciples reinforce this hope. Jesus comes from Bethphage and Bethany to the Mount of Olives, the place from which the Messiah was expected to enter. He sent two disciples ahead of him, telling them that they will find a tethered donkey, a young animal on which no one has yet sat. This is very symbolic and rich in mysterious insights.

They were to untie it and bring it to him. Should anyone ask by what authority they do so, they are to say: “The Lord has need of it” (Mk 11:3; Lk 19:31). The disciples find the donkey. As anticipated, they are asked by what right they act; they give the response they were told to give-and they are allowed to carry out their mission.

So Jesus rides on a borrowed donkey into the city and, soon afterwards, has the animal returned to its owner.

This might appear harmless to us but for the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus it is full of mysterious references we shall however give a number of reasons to assist us in understanding this.

The theme of the kingdom and its promises is ever-present. Jesus claims the right of kings, known throughout history of the means of transportation. The use of an animal on which no one had yet sat is a further pointer to the right of kings. In the Old Testament we have deeper meaning to the whole episode.

Genesis 49:10-11 speaks of Jacob’s blessing, in which Judah is promised the scepter, the ruler’s staff, which is not to depart from between his feet “until he comes to whom it belongs; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.” Of him it is said that he binds his donkey to the vine-Gen. 49:11. The tethered donkey, then, indicates the one who is to come, “to whom shall be the obedience of the peoples.”

The Gospel account of Matthew and John quotes Zechariah 9:9 clearly to aid our understanding of “Palm Sunday”: “Tell the daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Matt. 21:5; Jn 12:15 cf. Zech 9:9).

It speaks of the type of Jesus’ kingship. He is a king who destroys the weapons of war, a king of peace and a king of simplicity, a king of the poor. He reigns over a kingdom that stretches from sea to sea, embracing the whole world.

As one who rides on the mule, Jesus makes a royal claim. He wants his path and his action to be understood in terms of Old Testament promises that are fulfilled in his person.

The Old Testament speaks of him-and he of the Old Testament: he acts and lives within the word of God, not according to projects and wishes of his own. His claim is based on obedience to the mission received from his father. His path is a path into the heart of God’s word. Jesus does not build his kingdom in violence; he does instigate a military revolt against Rome. His power is of another kind: it is in God’s poverty, God’s peace that he identifies the only power that can redeem.

The donkey was brought to Jesus of something very interesting followed suit: the disciples lay their garments on the donkey. While Matthew 21:7 and Mark 11:7 simply say: “and he sat upon it” Luke writes: “they set Jesus upon it” Lk 19:35. This is the expression that is used in the first book of kings in the account of Solomon’s installation on the throne of his father David.

There we read that King David commanded Zadok the priest, Nathan the Prophet, and Benaiah: “take with you the servants of your Lord, and cause Solomon my son to ride on my own mule, and bring him down to Gihon; and let Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet there anoint him king over Israel.” (1 Kings 1:33-34).

The spreading out of the garment likewise belongs to the tradition of Israelite Kingship (2Kings 9:13). What the disciples do is a gesture of enthronement in the tradition of the Davidic kingship, and it points to the Messianic hope that grew out of the Davidic Tradition.

The pilgrims who came to Jerusalem with Jesus are caught up in the disciples’ enthusiasm. They now spread their garments on the street along which Jesus passes.

They pluck branches from the tress and cry out verses from Psalm 118, words of blessing from Israel’s pilgrim liturgy, which on their lips become a messianic proclamation: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is coming! Hosanna in the highest!” (Mk 11:9-10; cf. Ps 118:26).

The exclamation “Hosanna!” Originally this was a word of urgent supplication (cry) meaning something like: come to our aid! The priests would repeat it in a monotone on the seventh day of the feast of Tabernacles, while processing seven times around the altar of sacrifice, as an urgent prayer for rain. But as the Feast of Tabernacles gradually changed from the petition into one of praise, so too the cry for help turned more and more into a shout of jubilation.

By the Jesus’ time, this word had also acquired Messianic overtones. In the Hosanna acclamation, then, we find an expression of the complex emotions of the pilgrims accompanying Jesus and of his disciples: joyful praise of God at the moment of the processional entry, hope that the hour of the Messiah had arrived, and at the same time a prayer that the Davidic kingship and hence God’s kinship over Israel would be re-established.

The passage quoted from Psalm 118 “Blessed is he who enters in the name of the Lord!” had originally formed part of Israel’s pilgrim liturgy used for greeting pilgrims as they entered the city or the Temple. This emerges clearly from the second part of the verse: “we bless you from the house of the Lord.” it was a blessing that the priests addressed and, as it were, bestowed upon the pilgrims as they arrived. But in the meantime the phrase “who enters in the name of the Lord” had acquired Messianic significance.

It had become a designation of the one promised by God. So from being a pilgrim blessing, it became praise of Jesus, a greeting to him as the one who comes in the name of the Lord, the one awaited and proclaimed by all the promises.

Finally, we too like the crowd carrying our palm branches echo again as it were in those days, the acclamation “Hosanna! In the highest blessed is he comes in the name of the Lord! hosanna in the highest.” Proclaiming him as the king of peace, a king who kingdom is not bound by space or time, a king who does not instigate a war but introduces peace, a king who accepted the way of sacrifice and total self giving. We are called today to be selfless in all we do and promote the cause of peace in our environment.