Blessed is He Who Comes

St Paul announces in the epistle (Phil. 4:4-9) that “the Lord is near.”  It seems to me that this is the main reason this reading was chosen for Palm Sunday.  The Lord is near, and the liturgical celebration of all the great events which formed the climax of his life and mission begin today.  The Lord is near, as we celebrate his entrance into Jerusalem and his entrance into our midst as we prepare to worship Him in the mystery of his Passion and Resurrection, with fervor and love and a cry of “Hosanna!” in our hearts.

Actually, if we are to be more precise, the great events began yesterday with the raising of Lazarus, but in the Gospel of John this event is an integral part of the entry into Jerusalem.  For the Gospel (Jn. 12:1-18) says explicitly that the reason the crowds came out to welcome Jesus as he entered Jerusalem was precisely because He had just raised Lazarus from the dead.

The events and miracles and teachings throughout the Gospel of John were leading to the great event of Jesus’ own rising from the dead, which was part of what John calls his “glorification.”  It is a dramatic moment when, as Jesus prepares for his Passion and Death, He raises Lazarus from the dead as a testimony to his own power over death.  This power He also mentioned in his teachings: “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.  I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again” (Jn. 10:18).

Early in his public ministry, when Jesus forgave the paralytic’s sins, the Pharisees questioned his authority to do so.  Therefore Jesus healed the paralytic, saying that He did it “that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”  In a similar way, we can say that if anyone doubted Jesus’ predictions that He would rise from the dead, He raised Lazarus as if to say: “that you may know that the Son of Man has power to rise from the dead.”  So the mystery of death and resurrection is very much a part of the celebration of Palm Sunday.  The beginning of today’s Gospel definitely has the air of death about it, as Mary anointed the feet of Jesus and He referred this to his imminent death and burial.  He had set his face toward Jerusalem to perform his “exodus” as St Luke puts it, and nothing would deter Him from proceeding resolutely toward the fulfillment of the Father’s will, which was the expiation of our sins unto eternal salvation.

We might wonder what Jesus Himself was thinking as He entered the holy city, a city that had become the subject of his own lament, as it had been that of the prophets.  For one thing, He wasn’t easily swayed by the adulation of the crowd.  He could read their hearts, and He knew that very soon there would be no more hosannas but rather cries of “Crucify Him!”  Yet although He knew that, He didn’t come secretly into the city as He did on a previous feast, but still came openly, still allowed the voices of those fickle souls to sing his praises and proclaim Him the Messiah.

This also was part of God’s plan.  Christ isn’t a cynic.  Just because He knew the people’s instability and duplicity, He didn’t say, “Well, to hell with these hypocrites; I’m not going to accept their worthless praise.”  He allowed them to sing his praises at that moment, simply because it was fitting and right that his praises be sung!  The subjectivity of the crowd was secondary.  The primary thing was the imminent fulfillment of God’s plan for our salvation, an event of cosmic proportions that would not fittingly be carried out in secret.  Jesus acknowledged this Himself in Luke’s account.  When the Pharisees tried to quell the fervor of those who were welcoming Him as the Messiah, Jesus uttered his profound and famous response: “If these were to keep silent, the very stones would cry out!” (Lk. 19:40).  So, even if the hearts of some or many of the crowd were fickle, Jesus accepted their acclaim because it was the Father’s will that He be acclaimed and He was worthy of it.

There’s something else that Jesus came to do as He entered Jerusalem.  John doesn’t recount it at this point, but Matthew, Mark, and Luke do.  Jesus entered the city to cleanse the temple.  He was making his claim on the temple as the house of his Father, and, in what is perhaps a foreshadowing of his cleansing of the whole world through his atoning sacrifice, Jesus drove out the evil from his Father’s house and re-established it as a house of prayer, a place for the glory of God and not for the greed of men.

This point about the entry into Jerusalem was brought up by the biblical scholar Scott Hahn.  He makes the connection between what happened in Jerusalem and what happens in our own Liturgy, for we all sing the same words that the people did then: “Hosanna in the highest!  Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”  Jesus came to Jerusalem to die for our sins and rise from the dead for our eternal life.  We are aware of that as we sing “Hosanna” just before we offer the Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist, by which Jesus’ paschal mystery is made present to us.  But what we’re probably not sufficiently aware of is that Jesus is also coming to cleanse this temple!  We welcome Him so that He can set a table for us on the altar of his Sacrifice, and we want to be fed with the Bread of Heaven and the Chalice of Salvation.  But we don’t want to experience his anger over the defilement of his Father’s house—or, more to the point, of those temples of the Holy Spirit which are our own bodies and souls.

Let us remember, then, even as we joyfully welcome the Lord into our midst today with our acclamations and praise, that we are still in need of much purification, for we are the reason He had to suffer and shed his precious blood, enduring the incomprehensible agony of the Passion so that we could be released from our endless sins—we who one day sing “hosanna!” and the next shout “crucify Him!”  We don’t have to actually say the words for the effect to be the same.  Insofar as we turn away from God through sin, we contribute to the weight of the cross He bore, to the pain of the nails and the scourges.  The author of the Letter to the Hebrews goes so far as to say that if we fall away from God, we “crucify the Son of God on [our] own account and hold him up to contempt” (6:6).

The way that we live our lives has to be an expression of the way we worship God in church.  If we sing praises to the Lord and receive his Holy Gifts from the altar, our whole life has to be a song of praise, in one way or another, by our faithfulness to the Lord who loved us and gave Himself for us.

Our “hosanna” in church should everywhere else take the form of a “yes” to God in all that He asks us to do for Him and for each other, not fleeing from the Cross but embracing it in faith and confidence in the Lord’s grace and providence.  This is the way we bless in practice the One who comes in the name of the Lord.

The usual liturgical expression is “blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”  In one translation of the psalm from which this verse comes (117/118), it reads “blessed in the name of the Lord is he who comes.”  I used to think this was just an awkward English rendering, and even if it does sound that way, it is in fact more precise.  That is because “He who comes” is a special term for the Messiah.  Jesus is not someone who happens to be coming in the name of the Lord.  He is Himself “He who comes,” the long-awaited One.  Martha recognized this when Jesus came to raise her dead brother Lazarus: “I believe that you are the Christ… He who is coming into the world” (Jn. 11:27).

“He who comes” is coming again at the end of days to judge the living and the dead.  But “He who comes” is coming anew, today, into our midst, offering us another opportunity to spiritually walk with Him the via dolorosa, the way of sorrow that is his Passion, but also to share in the glorious joy and hope that He grants us by his Resurrection.

The Lord is near, says the Apostle.  “He who comes” is coming.  Let us worthily welcome Him, not only with palm branches and liturgical acclamations, but with hearts that are wholly given over to Him in faith and trust and love.  Let us accept whatever cleansing of our inner temple we may need, so as to be pure of heart for the celebration of these great mysteries of our salvation.  Let us allow Jesus to drive out all that is yet in us that is not of the Father, for He has come to defend his Father’s honor and to gather his people.  St John in his First Epistle tells us that the threefold concupiscence, which summarizes “the world” in its pejorative sense—the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life—is not of the Father but of the world.  And the world with its seductions is passing away, but those who do the will of God abide forever.

We are called to be “of the Father” and not of the passing seductions of the world.  That way our hearts will be true when we sing praises to the Lord, for we will not be deterred or sidetracked by anything that is not of God.  Our hope is in the name of the Lord, who made Heaven and Earth, and in his Son Jesus Christ, who came to suffer and die so that we might have eternal life.

The Lord is near.  Come, let us welcome and receive Him and resolutely follow Him along the way—the way of the Cross which finds its full meaning at the empty tomb.  Blessed in the name of the Lord is He who has come out of love to save us.