Our entrance Antiphon today included the verse from Psalm 23: Let him enter, the King of glory! We are here now precisely to welcome the King of Glory; to invite him in; to let him in to our hearts and homes and lives. Thank God he comes to us and asks to enter! Thank God for the Mass, which is once again available!
Many people during this lock-down have followed the Mass and other services virtually, via their computer screens. There has been some consolation there, amid all the isolation and national paralysis. But how much better it is to be here really, in a real Church with a real Altar and a real Priest, amid real people, with real bread and real wine, which really become Christ’s Body and Blood, really offered, in a real and living sacrifice to God for the real forgiveness of our sins!
Palm Sunday seems to me to be a very good sort of day on which to return at last to Mass: even if we’re still not allowed a Procession or blessed Palms. Today we commemorate two events, which are both contrasted and also linked. First, today, Jesus enters the Holy City in triumph; then on Good Friday he is cast out of it in shame and disgrace. Today the crowds shout Hosanna! as they welcome Jesus their King, and Messiah, and Liberator, and Lord. On Friday they will cry Crucify! as they denounce him as a criminal, a blasphemer, a rebel: to be humiliated and tortured and delivered up to death. Yet the liturgy rightly links these two days, these two events.
Today Jesus goes up to the Jerusalem Temple, as a symbol of his going up to God; going up to offer worship in God’s sacred sanctuary. On Good Friday he does the same thing, only not in symbol but in reality. He goes up to God, as our great High Priest, and he takes us with him. He shares in our human death, and our separation from God, in order that we might share in his divine life, and his perfect union with his heavenly Father.
Commentators often note that St. Mark’s Passion is the darkest among all the Gospels. Yet St. Mark gives much more prominence to Jesus’ title of King than do either Matthew or Luke. In his passion narrative, Mark names Jesus as King six or seven times. That is: first Pilate asks - Are you the King of the Jews? Then he asks the crowds: shall I release the King of the Jews? When they demand Barabbas instead, Pilate asks again: What shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews? Jesus is then handed over to the soldiers, who mock him with cries of Hail, King of the Jews! The title is then set in writing above the Cross. In Mark, it reads simply: The King of the Jews. In the sixth mention of this title King, the passing crowds cry out in mockery: Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down from the Cross now! A possible seventh time is the confession of the Centurion. He says: Truly this man was the Son of God. “Son of God” is a title of the Davidic King of Israel. But of course in the context it means much more than that.
Jesus then is our King, in his glory and in his humiliation: on Palm Sunday and on Good Friday. As our King, he is not just our royal ruler, our sacred leader, but also our anointed representative, our champion and hero. As such he is brought down very low: as low as can possibly be, on our behalf, for our sake. Then he is afterwards raised very high: and we with him.
So today, and always, we cry out to him: Hosanna, Son of David! All honour and glory be to you, Jesus, our King! Jesus, save us, remember us, as we today remember you; as today especially we remember what you have done for us. You suffered so much because of our sins: yet we know that these sufferings have limitless power to take away all sin. May we then not fail to receive the eternal blessings you have won for us, out of your goodness, and your love, and your mercy.