“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! … Hosanna in the highest!” Today, as Christ enters Jerusalem, the crowds are raucous with joy. Today they welcome the Lord. In five short days, they will condemn Him: “His blood be on us and on our children!” (Mt 27:25).

          Lest we judge too harshly the crowd that gathered two thousand years ago, we recall that the Sacred Liturgy places these same words on our lips at every celebration of the Holy Mass. We become that same crowd that welcomes and then condemns the Lord as we sing, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” After all, as we have recited so many times at the Stations of the Cross: “My adorable Jesus, it was not Pilate, no, it was my sins that condemned Thee to die.”

          How, then, could we take these frightening words so repeatedly upon our lips? This is truly the greatness of what Christ has done. In obedience to the will of the Father, He has taken on the depth of the human condition, not merely to pay a price, but to restore what was broken. Laid in the tomb, He takes with him our humanity to His divine workshop, where it will be not only refashioned and repaired but made entirely new.

          Then, in the depths of His love, He gives back to us what was broken and lost. He sets upon our lips the words of the crowds – “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the Highest!” – because those very words have been redeemed. Unknowingly, even those who condemned Him to death played a part in the mystery of salvation and are not excluded from the possibility of forgiveness.

          When the Lord calls us to sacrificial love, He will not merely take from us. He always restores what we have lost in its truest meaning and purpose. There is no need to fear sin, death, or even Heaven anymore.

          We often tell people that when we believe in God, things just go better in our lives. Christ’s death reveals this as a shallow version of Christianity, if it is Christianity at all. Belief in Christ does not always make our lives easier. “To be restored, our sickness must grow worse.” The healing of our wounds of sin comes through tragedy and pain, but this tragedy and pain are no longer to be endured without hope, because they are redeemed by His tragedy, and His pain. Christ’s saving death shows us that suffering has been transformed from within, and that we too are able to able to cry out, “Blessed is He!” because our infidelity has been transformed by the obedience of the Son of God.

          From the Cross, Christ has given us back our humanity – our freedom, our love, and everything that makes life truly beautiful and worthwhile – so that we might fear no more.

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion, A.D. MMXXVI