“HOSANNA, HE’S HERE”
Saint Matthew 21: 1-9
PALMARUM: 5 April Anno Domini 2020
Father Jay Watson SSP
I don’t know if there are Scriptural and orthodox (small ‘O’) parishes in modern day Jerusalem. I think there must be since the Church is Catholic. But if not, then Jesus is not “[drawing] nigh unto Jerusalem,” not “[coming] to Bethphage,” and not “[coming] unto the mount of Olives.” Those actual historical events were both physical and visual, but they were more than 2,000 years ago.
So why do you still sing Hosanna this very day—every Lord’s day, every Holy Mass? What does this mean?
It means that the Word of Lord spoken by Zacharias was not just fulfilled, but IS fulfilled, is always BEING fulfilled. Jesus wasn’t just The Savior, JESUS IS The Savior. There is no, I was, but rather always, I AM!
The events on that first Palm Sunday were an introduction to Holy Week, and they ended with the culmination of Holy Thursday—the institution of The Sacrament of The Altar; Good Friday—the Paschal Mystery of The God/Man suffering and dying on the Cross to pay for and atone for the sins of the world (YOUR SINS) finishing and completing all The Law and all The perfect loving of God and neighbor; Holy Saturday—sanctifying the grave so that your own death is but a temporary rest until the Resurrection of all flesh; and finally Easter—Christ’s triumphant public victory over sin, death, and Satan, your verdict of acquittal spoken to the Magdalene, His Virgin Mother, and the Apostles; and by the Evangelists to you. But again, all this was over two millennia ago.
But do you not sing out, shout out: “Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest?” You do! This is the three-fold Trinitarian + Name of your Baptismal identity. Your chants mingle in heavenly harmony with all that historic crowd: “Save Now,” “God save,” “God save The King (Jesus),” and “Jesus Save.” The Christ did, for His name means Save! But Christ DOES—an endurable “NOW” saving, for He is the “same, yesterday, and today, and forever” [Heb. 13.8]. Remember, that, just before the Hosanna is sung the Saints lift up their voices and proclaim “Blessed is He that comes in the Name + of The Lord.”
There you have it. Jesus comes to you today in His Words and in His Body and Blood. The exact same words that He spoke on the day when He rode into Jerusalem; with the identical Body and Blood, though now, both glorified, and invisible to the eye.
Jerusalem in 2020 is just another crowded, modernist, and mostly pagan 21st century city—Historically relevant, sentimentally valued, but no different (really) than Paris, Antioch, Constantinople, Alexandria, or Kansas City.
This place is Jerusalem! Here, is the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, the part of the whole located here, in which the whole truly exists. HERE at this parish is the location of PEACE—peace that passes understanding.
The ass, the donkey, was a normal and ordinary “means” (a way) for The God/Man to come to His people. Wafer thin bread and inexpensive white wine is a normal and ordinary “means” for another, THE ULTIMATE, miracle to take place. By The present Words, The Verba, The Consecration, Jesus unites His actual, real, true, and physical Body and Blood to the bread and wine. His Body and Blood given and shed on Calvary for the forgiveness of your sins, life, and salvation, is now present in The Sacrament to loose you, to fulfill the words spoken by The Prophet: “Daughter of Zion, behold, thy King comes to you.”
Jesus again spreads out His Righteous Robes upon you, binds you up, washes you clean, and feeds you Life Eternal. His palms wipe away your tears and sets you before The Father, IN HIM.
It isn’t so much that everything in Scripture is about The Sacrament, as, it is EVERYTHING in Scripture is about JESUS. And Jesus is The Sacrament; The Sacrament is Jesus.
What Jesus did for you and all the world on Palmarum always leads to, and always has its delivery, in what Jesus does for you today.
Hosanna to The Son of David, blessed is He that cometh in The + Name of The Lord. And blessed are all of you to whom He comes in His own + name, and yours: Savior—the saved.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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