The Entry of the Lord Into Jerusalem

A sermon for Palm Sunday

Tell the daughter of Zion: see, your King is coming to you, meek, seated on a donkey and on a young colt, the foal of a beast of burden (Mt 21:5)

On His way to Jerusalem for His voluntary, world-saving Passion, the Lord wished to visit, along the way, His ailing friend Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary; and since by His divine omniscience He foresaw his death, He resolved to perform the glorious raising of him from the dead, for the assurance of the general resurrection of the whole human race. The miracle of the raising of the four-day-dead man, already given over to decay, more than all the other miracles glorified Jesus Christ, as the Messiah and the Vanquisher of the universal death of man, and was the cause of the rapturous welcome given Him by the inhabitants and the visitors of Jerusalem gathered for the feast of the Jewish Passover. But in the chief priests, scribes and Pharisees it aroused terrible envy and malice, and they resolved finally to put to death the One who denounced their vices, and who had come to put our very death itself to death. His crucifiers did not know that they were crucifying their Benefactor, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world[1] and their own sins as well—Him who prayed to the Father: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing[2]. But the blasphemers of today, such as Leo Tolstoy and his companions, know the Savior of the world, who has been preached and received by faith throughout all the world; yet in their pride they want to mock the common faith and revile Him, and if they do not believe and do not repent, they will all perish in their wickedness[3]. Since today the holy Church solemnly, in commemoration, celebrates the Savior’s entry on a young donkey, bearing no yoke of any kind, into the holy city of Jerusalem, amid the joyful rejoicing of the people and especially of the children, let us speak of what this extraordinary and, seemingly, strange entry of His into Jerusalem on a she-donkey and her colt, and not on a horse as was the custom of eastern kings and victors, meant; what this joy and rejoicing of the people, and especially of the guileless children who glorified the Lord, signified; and how hell, seething with all wickedness, stirred up impious men to murder the Giver of Life and Lord, not foreseeing that Christ, slain by it in the flesh, would plunge His wooden spear, that is, His cross, into its hellish belly and pierce it with a mortal, everlasting piercing, and deliver the souls it had swallowed up from its all-devouring belly.

Let us listen to how the holy evangelist Matthew describes the solemn entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem.

When Christ, His disciples, and the crowd drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethany at the Mount of Olives, «Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them: Go into the village opposite you, and at once you will find a donkey tied and a young colt with her; untie them and bring them to Me, and if anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them at once. All this took place so that what was spoken through the prophet might be fulfilled, who says: Say to the daughter of Zion: See, your King comes to you, righteous and bringing salvation, gentle, and seated on a donkey and on a young colt, the foal of a beast of burden[4]. The disciples went and did as Jesus had commanded them. They brought the donkey and the young colt and laid their garments on them, and He sat upon them. And a great multitude of the people spread their garments on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before Him and that followed after cried out: Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!

And when He entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up and asked: Who is this? And the crowd said: This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee. And Jesus entered the temple of God… and the lame and the blind came up to Him, and He healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonders He had worked, and the children crying out in the temple and saying: Hosanna to the Son of David! they were indignant. And they said to Him: Do You hear what they are saying? And Jesus said to them: Yes! Have you never read: Out of the mouths of infants and nursing infants You have prepared praise[5]? and leaving them, He went out of the city to Bethany and spent the night there»[6]. Such is the account of the Lord’s entry into Jerusalem.

Why, contrary to all custom, did Jesus Christ enter Jerusalem not on a horse, but on a donkey and on a young colt? — Here we see the mind of God. The Lord teaches us not only by words, but also by things animate and inanimate. Thus He cursed the barren fig tree as a rebuke to the barrenness of the Jews and of Judas the traitor; here He is seated on a donkey and a colt as a sign that He will bring the pagan nations, who had not known the yoke of the law of Moses, to the knowledge of His dominion and of His eternal kingdom, in place of the people of the Jews that had fallen away from God; and when the full number of the pagans has entered the Church of Christ, then the Jews too will turn to Christ. Thus the entry into Jerusalem on a donkey and a colt had a mysterious meaning—namely, the conversion of the pagans, among whom we Russians have also been called. As for the rejoicing of the people and of the children, who welcomed with joy the Lord coming on the donkey, this common joy came from the rapture that filled their hearts at the raising from the tomb of Lazarus, a dead man of four days, and from their wonder at the Divine Wonderworker; and it was the Holy Spirit who spoke through the mouths of the guileless children praising the Lord.

The Lord’s entry into Jerusalem produced an entirely opposite effect on the proud and envious Pharisees: it stirred up in them a feeling of extreme envy and malice, and they resolved to kill Him. It seems that from that moment all of hell took up residence within them. The passions blind a man, and he does not himself know what he is doing—the most absurd and reckless deeds—as He Himself, the One crucified by them on the cross, said of them: Father, forgive them, for they do not see what they are doing. Christ came as the immortal God to destroy the death that was devouring the human race and to grant us immortality by His victory over death—but His enemies killed Him Himself in the flesh, and by doing so, without knowing it or realizing it, they brought the greatest good to the human race; and without doubt they too would have been forgiven by the Lamb of God, who took upon Himself the sins of the world, had they repented of their deicide.

Marvelous are Your works, O Lord! Hell, in its blind and boundless malice, roused all its power in the chief priests, the scribes and the Pharisees for the killing of Christ, and even beguiled with the love of money one of Christ’s apostles into betraying to death the Giver of Life to all; and, by God’s allowance, in fulfillment of the wise and everlasting Counsel of God for the salvation of the human race by the death of Christ, it attained the aim of its hellish efforts and killed the flesh of the Giver of Life—but above all it destroyed itself; and if it had known the consequences of Christ’s sufferings and death for its hellish kingdom, it would have exerted every effort to keep Him from suffering and death. The cross and the death of the Giver of Life destroyed the power and kingdom of Satan, and he surrendered all the souls he had swallowed up to the Redeemer of our race, who had plundered hell. The Church sings of this victory of crucified Christ over hell in this way: Pilate raised three crosses on Golgotha: two of the robbers and one of the Giver of Life; hell, catching sight of Him, let out a cry of despair and called out to its servants, the demonic hosts: «O my servants and my powers! Who has hammered nails into my heart and dealt me a sudden piercing with a wooden spear? I am torn apart; I agonize terribly in my inward parts; I am wounded in my belly; my senses confuse my spirit, and I am forced to spew out Adam and all who came from him, who were handed over to me through the tasting of the forbidden tree; for the tree of the cross leads them back into paradise[7]». That is what hell brought down upon its own wretched head by driving Christ to death on the cross. Christ crushed its dominion and plundered all its booty—all its vast wealth of souls, as Holy Church bears witness in her Sunday services.

So let us all cry out to Christ the Giver of Life, the Conqueror of death: Blessed is He who comes to His voluntary passion for the sake of our salvation, and who by His sufferings on the cross and His death has conquered our death and granted resurrection to all—a resurrection that will be accomplished on the last day of the world.

Since we have been given this time for the struggles of correcting our life and for every virtue, let us take care to conquer in ourselves the passions of flesh and spirit, and to adorn our souls with mercy toward our neighbors, with meekness, humility, obedience, patience, long-suffering, temperance, purity, and chastity. Amen.