By Fr. George Dorbarakis
Today constitutes an end and a beginning. An end, because it marks the completion of Great Lent; a beginning, because it begins Great Week. A journey of forty days, from Clean Monday to yesterday, Lazarus Saturday, was to reach this point: with our spiritual senses activated by the struggle of repentance, abstinence and fasting - that is, what Lent presents as its content - to be able to see and taste the shocking events of the Passion and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and to participate in them as much as possible. This is the purpose of this blessed period, this is the purpose in reality of the entire spiritual life, since this is how our charismatic self, which we received from God at the time of our baptism, is activated. We want to say that Great Week comes in a very effective way for the conscious believer to remind him that he himself, from the moment he was baptized, participated in the Death and Resurrection of Christ, so that the Passion and Resurrection of the Lord during Great Week highlight not only His life, but also the life of the Christian.
And behold, today confirms the above truths. The Lord has resurrected His brotherly friend Lazarus, when “His voice was heard in the depths of Hades” to bring him up from the realm of the dead, thus proclaiming His own and the general resurrection of men; and while entering the Holy City of Zion, seated on the colt of a donkey, He reveals, on the one hand, His decisive path in humility towards the Passion, and on the other, His call for all nations to participate in It. The hymnology of the day is par excellence revelatory on these things:
“Wanting to foreshadow Your own revered Resurrection, O Good One, You raised by Your command Your friend Lazarus who had died.”
"As You entered, O Lord, into the Holy City, sitting on a colt, You hastened to come to the Passion, in order to fulfill the Law and the Prophets.”
“You symbolically mounted the colt, O Savior, as on a chariot, wanting to show the end of the other pagan nations.”
“Your sitting on it foreshadowed the disobedience of the nations, which was being transformed from unbelief into faith.”
The Lord's entry into Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey is therefore the record of the last act of His earthly journey. The Lord is no longer hidden. He preached, worked miracles, revealed the true God the Father and the life that one must follow in order to be with Him. However, the omniscient Lord knows that words alone are not enough. Humanity, fallen into sin, had suffered a deep wound from its apostasy from God, which is why He "allowed Him to suffer." The incarnate God had to suffer, to be crucified, in order to "take away the sins" of the entire universe on the Cross. His Cross would be that which would inflict the decisive and crucial blow against sin, against death, against the arch-evil devil. The resurrection of man would come after His death and holy Crucifixion, as a participation in the Resurrection itself. And the resurrection of Lazarus was, as we said, the proclamation of this universal joy.
The hymnology of the day, in fact, insists on this symbolic interpretation of the events: Christ’s victory over death and through it the common resurrection of people is also projected with the branches of palm trees that the children of Israel waved, shouting the angelic hymn: “Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”
“Together give glory, peoples and nations, for the King of Angels has now sat on the colt of a donkey, and comes by His will to the Cross, to strike down the enemies as one who is mighty. That is why the children, with their palms, loudly shout the hymn: Glory to You who have come Victoriously, glory to You, the Savior Christ.”
“And we, like children, holding the palms as symbols of victory over sin and death, loudly shout to You, the Conqueror of death: Hosanna in the highest…”
It is very important, however, to emphasize that our Church points out a very profound truth about this outcry of the children and the people for the Lord entering the city of Zion. The triumphant reception of the Lord, which leads to His Passion and Resurrection, presupposes rich grace from God. In other words, these people can, on the one hand, glorify the Lord and on the other, condemn Him with “Alas, alas, crucify Him,” but at the specific moment of His reception they are possessed by grace, which moves them to give glory. The synaxarion of the day, in its description of the events, states: “Thus, He who has a throne in heaven, sitting on a donkey, enters Jerusalem. And the children of the Jews, like themselves, threw down their garments, while waving branches of palm trees, cried out loudly: ‘Hosanna to the Son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel.’ This happened because the All-Holy Spirit moved their tongues to praise and glorify Christ. And the branches of the palm trees signified Christ’s victory over death.”
Thus, the hymnology of our Church brings us back to reality and emphasizes what we pointed out at the beginning: no one can, without preconditions, without a spiritual struggle that cleanses the soul and body from passions, become a sharer of Christ in His Passion and Resurrection. “In a way that is conceivable, with branches, let us also glorify Christ by faith, yet purified in souls like children.” The entire struggle of Holy Lent was precisely to shake off from our hearts that which ages and defiles us, namely sin, and to make us children again in soul. Only he who keeps his childhood as a purity of soul can and has open eyes to behold the Passion and Resurrection of Christ and to participate in them. And this participation, we repeat again, means finding our true charismatic self that emerged during our Holy Baptism. “In union with you through baptism, O Christ our God, we have been made worthy of immortal life through your Resurrection.”
However, the above remark also leads to another truth, which especially in our time must be highlighted and indeed with emphasis. Maintaining spiritual purity means God's grace, that is, love and unity. God truly rests in pure souls, which means that He gives them the ability to love their fellow man and to feel united with him. Where, in other words, there is division and enmity and aggression, there, even if "theophilic talk" is heard, there is an absence of God, therefore the presence of a demonic spirit. And it is something that our Church not only notes, but also emphasizes abundantly. Not once, but six times in the service of today's Palm Sunday, she urges the faithful, united among us, to lift up the Cross of Christ and glorify Him like the children of the Jews. "Today, the grace of the Holy Spirit has brought us together; and all of us, lifting up Your Cross, say: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest." The hymn may refer to the monks who were called at the end of Lent to gather in their monastery from wherever they were, either as individual ascetics or in any ministry, because they all had to live Great Week together, but the essence remains the same: all the faithful gathered in our Church, as members of the body of Christ, and indeed with the unity of all the powers of our soul, without spiritual or local distances, we are called to live the Passion and Resurrection of the Lord. In fact, in this unity we must perhaps also measure our spiritual measures. If I do not feel united with my other brother in Christ, if my readiness is to doubt and neutralize him, it is rather a utopia to think that I will live Great Week and that the Resurrection of Christ will once again illuminate my life.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
