Palm Sunday – Blessed is He Who Comes in the Name of the Lord

Palm Sunday – Blessed is He Who Comes in the Name of the Lord

And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest. (Matthew 21:9)

Scenes from the Life of Christ- Entry into Jerusalem (detail) 1304-06
by Giotto Di Bondone

Palm Sunday is the last Sunday in Lent, and celebrates the triumphant entry of Jesus into the City of Jerusalem for  Passover. According to the Gospels, Jesus entered riding upon a donkey, with the multitude spreading their cloaks and laying palm branches on the ground to honor his arrival as their long-awaited Messiah.

The donkey, or domesticated ass, was a symbol of peace. The laying of palm branches symbolized a king or leader arriving in victory. This was a fulfillment of a prophecy of the prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 9:9).

There are many Christian traditions honoring this historic event, to remind all believers of its significance.

According to the the Orthodox tradition,

With palm branches in our hands, we identify ourselves with the people of Jerusalem, together with them we greet the lowly King, singing Hosannah to Him. But what is the meaning of this today for us? First, it is our confession of Christ as our King and Lord. We forget so often that the Kingdom of God has already been inaugurated and that on the day of our Baptism we were made citizens of it and promised to put our loyalty to it above all other loyalties.

The branches in our hands signify, therefore, our readiness and willingness to follow Him on this sacrificial way and our acceptance of sacrifice and self-denial as the only royal way to the Kingdom. And finally these branches, this celebration, proclaim our faith in the final victory of Christ. His Kingdom is yet hidden and the world ignores it. It lives as if the decisive event had not taken place, as if God had not died on the Cross and Man in Him was not raised from the dead. But we, Orthodox Christians, believe in the coming of the Kingdom in which God will be all in all and Christ the only King.

In the Roman Catholic celebration of Palm Sunday:

This ceremony is intended to represent the entry of Jesus into that Jerusalem of which the earthly one was but the figure–the Jerusalem of heaven, which has been opened for us by our Saviour. The sin of our first parents had shut it against us; but Jesus, the King of glory, opened its gates by His cross, to which every resistance yields. Let us, then, continue to follow in the footsteps of the Son of David, for He is also the Son of God, and He invites us to share His kingdom with Him. Thus, by the procession, which is commemorative of what happened on this day, the Church raises up our thoughts to the glorious mystery of the Ascension, whereby heaven was made the close of Jesus’ mission on earth. Alas l the interval between these two triumphs of our Redeemer are not all days of joy; and no sooner is our procession over, than the Church, who had laid aside for a moment the weight of her grief, falls back into sorrow and mourning.

And for Protestant/Evangelical Christians,

[E]vangelical churches that have tended to look with suspicion on traditional “High-Church” observances of Holy Week are now realizing the value of Holy Week services. . .  This has a solid theological basis both in Scripture and in the traditions of the Faith.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who was executed by the Nazis, wrote of the Cost of Discipleship and warned of “cheap grace” that did not take seriously either the gravity of sin or the radical call to servanthood: “When Jesus bids a man come, he bids him come and die.”

It is this dimension that is well served by Holy Week observances, as they call us to move behind the joyful celebrations of Palm Sunday and Easter, and focus on the suffering, humiliation, and death that is part of Holy Week. It is important to place the hope of the Resurrection, the promise of newness and life, against the background of death and endings. It is only in walking through the shadows and darkness of Holy Week and Good Friday, only in realizing the horror and magnitude of sin and  its consequences in the world incarnated in the dying Jesus on the cross, only in contemplating the ending and despair that the disciples felt on Holy Saturday, that we can truly understand the light and hope of Sunday morning!

As we come to the end of this Lenten season, we at CelebrateYourFaith.com pray that you are touched by God during your remembrance and celebration of Holy Week!

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