A Spiritual Reflection on Palm Sunday
Hosanna to the Son of David, Who comes in the Name of the Lord, the King of Israel!
“Clearly they proclaim that the Redeemer, Who was to be born of the House of David, had come; and that He truly was David’s son according to the flesh.” - St. Ambrose
Today is Palm Sunday, the first day in Holy Week. It is easy to see the events surrounding Holy Week as merely celebrating individual, isolated events from the last days of Christ’s earthly ministry. In reality, though, the deeper spiritual and moral significance of Palm Sunday contains within themes which unfold throughout the events celebrated during Holy Week and the Easter Season.
On the surface, the first theme to immediately suggest itself to us is the paradox of Christ’s Kingship. Christ, as God incarnate, is the only human who can rightfully say to contain within Himself in a rightful or proper sense - that is, by nature - Divine Authority. As Christ rode through the streets of Jerusalem, the political and religious center of the Holy Land, He was cheered on by the crowds, proclaiming Him to be the Son of David (something that, for Ancient Jews, would have had clear messianic implications). Those present threw the branches of on the ground. Matthew, Mark and Luke don’t specify what sort of branches they were, but John’s Gospel specifies that they were palm branches. In the Ancient world, the branches of palm trees were a symbol for victory. We see this in 2 Maccabees: the supporters of the Maccabean Revolt, after successfully regaining control of the Temple and converting it back from a pagan house of worship to a place for the worship of the One, True God, used palms during the rededication rituals. Palms were very often used during welcoming ceremonies for kings or dignitaries. By throwing palms on the ground before Christ, what is being signified is Christ’s victory and kingly authority. Yet, when placed within the broader framework of Christian theology and spirituality, it takes on a deeper meaning: Christ’s authority is of Divine origin, and His victory is a victory over sin and death.
We see this, for example, in St. Ambrose’s commentary on Luke. He notes that the donkey that Christ rode on was a symbol for the spiritual slavery caused by the Fall. It refers in a special way to the Gentiles, who at this point had not access to even the prophesies or promises of future salvation that were given to the People of Israel. Nonetheless, whether one is a Jew or a Gentile, one can find no spiritual freedom apart from Christ, something represented by the fact, St. Ambrose recalls, that, according to Mark’s version of the story, the donkey was found outside of the city walls of Jerusalem, which represents being outside of relationship with God. As St. Ambrose goes on to say,
He [the donkey] stands in no man’s land, without crib or fodder or stable. Unhappy is such servitude, where one is condemned to a wandering life. Being ownerless, he has many masters. These many masters tie him up so that they could possess him. Jesus frees him, so that He might have him. Far more powerful, as Jesus knows well, are gifts than chains.
When we are not untied to God, we can never know true happiness, meaning or peace. This is because, apart from a relationship with God, our life is not oriented towards its proper goal, that on account of which God created us, namely union with Him in heaven. Our life is defined by spiritual idleness, jumping from spiritual goal to the next. And because these spiritual goals are not God, they cannot provide any authentic spiritual freedom, but rather come to control us. This was signified by the donkey being tied up: when we pursue anything other than God as our ultimate goal, that which we desire does not want what is truly good for us, but rather wants to control us. Those who seek to spiritually oppress us have no right to claim such authority over us, but do so, knowing that when we do not have God, we will attach ourselves to anything that we falsely believe will give us meaning.
Christ has authentic authority over us; yet, He manifests this authority not by oppressing us, but by freeing us from spiritual slavery. THIS is the defining feature of Who Christ is. Thus, in Luke 19:31, when the Apostles sent by Jesus to receive the donkey say, “The Lord [has need of him],” Ambrose sees the following implication: “For though in a general sense there are many gods and many masters, there is only ONE GOD and ONE MASTER. In giving Himself no name, our Lord is making Himself known not as an individual person but in His Nature as Lord of all.”
That which is symbolized in the story of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem - His spiritual kingship which frees us from slavery to sin, from meaninglessness and despair - reaches its culmination on the Cross, in which Christ offered the perfect Sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins and merited grace on our behalf. It is for this reason that stories surrounding Christ’s entry into Jerusalem and those surrounding Christ’s Passion and Death are both read on Palm Sunday: what is signified by Christ’s entry into Jerusalem is fulfilled under the guise of its opposite on the Cross. Christ’s victory over sin, death and evil is manifested in suffering from the effects of sin, death and evil; Christ destroys injustice by making Himself a victim of injustice; in that which is the ultimate and primordial sign of our separation from God, Christ draws us closer to God.
In spite of the fact that Christ showcases His Kingship in the most definitive and most profound way upon the Cross, thereby saving us from sin, this does not imply that we were justified in putting Christ to death. Even though He saved us by permitting Himself to be subject to the opposite, Christ, as God in human form, is deserving of the way He was treated while entering into Jerusalem: praise, adoration, being loved and respected above all else. Those who sentenced Christ to an unjust death, those who mocked, tortured, spit upon, and pierced Jesus, did sin in doing so, though Christ used that as a means of bringing about our salvation.
What could make people move from praising Jesus, welcoming Him as a King, on Palm Sunday, and then sentencing Him to death a few days later? All the different figures in the story of Christ’s Passion and Death signify this in various ways: Judas was motivated by greed (Mark 14:10-11); St. Peter, in abandoning Christ, was motivated by cowardice (Mark 14:66-72); the members of the Sanhedrin, by their false beliefs (Christ did not meet what they expected the Messiah to be, and thus concluded that He was a blasphemer) and confusion of legalism with piety (Mark 14:60-63); with Pontius Pilate, by his indifference (Mark 15:9-15). Note, how very rarely did any of them act out of pure hatred: Judas was motivated by self-interest, and even upon betraying Jesus, called Him by a title of honor; the Jewish religious leaders genuinely believed they were doing the Will of God; Peter denied Jesus, not because of any shame in following Christ - in fact, earlier he had directly said, “Even though I should have to die with You, I will not deny You” (Mark 14:31) - but out of fear.
Cowardice, fear, selfishness, attachment to false beliefs, indifference towards the true and the good: all of these are the most common reasons for betraying Christ, and all of them result from pride. Pride has been traditionally defined by the Church as the belief that we don’t need God, that we are not dependent on God, and therefore that obedience to God is optional. Pride is the cause of our rebellion against God, and all the wicked spiritual fruit that come forth from that.
Nonetheless, as many saints have pointed out, Christ’s entry into Jerusalem represents not only Christ’s Kingship considered in and of itself, but also the fact that wherever this Kingship is manifested, sin is defeated, and thus an acknowledgment of Christ’s Kingship is the antidote to pride. As St. Francis de Sales notes in a sermon delivered on Palm Sunday, 1622, the donkey was commonly taken as a symbol for humility, and thus Christ’s procession into Jerusalem on a donkey was a symbol for His victory over pride. In St. Francis’s words,
But let us return to the reasons why our Savior chose these animals to mount. The first is because of its humility. The ass, though heavy, sluggish and lazy, has great humility. It is neither proud nor vain; in this it is unlike the haughty horse. Is not a vain and proud man compared to a horse (cf. Psalm 31:9), which is fiery and arrogant. … Now Our Lord, Who was humble and came to destroy pride, chose not to use this proud animal to carry Him. He chose the most simply and most humble of all animals because He so loved lowliness and humility that only a humble mount could serve Him. God dwells and abides only in the simply and humble of heart (cf. Isaiah 57:15). Wishing to show His esteem for this virtue, He chose lowliness and abjection for the day of His triumph. He emptied and humbled Himself. He would not have been humiliated and despised by others unless He willed it. He emptied Himself, choosing abjection. He Who was the Father’s equal in all things, without ceasing to remain what He was, chose to be the reproach and outcast of the people (cf. Psalm 21:7, Isaiah 53:3). Though humbled in this way, He nevertheless could affirm His equality with the Father and the Holy Spirit, for He was, with them, one Substance, one Power and one Wisdom.
Christ was one in Nature and Substance with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He was equal to God in all ways. He nevertheless allowed Himself to manifest Himself as a human, to allow Himself to experience humiliation and unjust treatment, in order to, firstly, reconcile us to the Father, and secondly, to serve as a model of humility.
Thus, if we wish to be like the Blessed Virgin Mary, who remained close to her Son even during His Passion, Death and Burial, and like what the Apostles were after seeing the Risen Lord - after which point the Apostles were loyal to their King and Savior, to the point of traveling the world and undergoing persecutions and death for the sake of furthering His Kingdom - in order to not be like those who walked the streets of Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday, who honored Christ one day and mocked Him the next, in a word, in order to truly give honor and homage to Our King, we must be open to the effects of His Saving mission, which in turn requires us to overcome pride and all of its spiritual effects and allow ourselves to be made new creatures in Christ.
Sources:
Pheme Perkins, “The Gospel According to St. John,” in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. Fr. Raymond Brown, S.S., Fr. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., and Fr. Roland E. Murphy, O.Carm. (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1990), pg. 971
St. Ambrose of Milan, Commentary on the Gospel According to St. Luke, trans. by Ide M. NiRain (Dublin: Halcyon, 2001), pg. 304-305
St. Francis de Sales, “Humility and Obedience: Sermon for Palm Sunday, 1622), in The Sermons of St. Francis de Sales for Lent (Charlotte: TAN Books, 1987), pg. 170-171