Homily Two for Palm Sunday (St. John of Kronstadt)

  

Homily Two for Palm Sunday

By St. John of Kronstadt

(Delivered on April 10, 1905)

“Praise Him together, peoples and nations: for the King of the angels has now mounted upon a colt, and He comes of His own will to go to the Cross to strike down the enemies, as One mighty. Therefore the children also, with branches, cry out a hymn: glory to You who have come, O Victor; glory to You, O Savior Christ; glory to You, the Blessed One, our only God” (Palm Sunday, sessional hymn after the 2nd Kathisma).

Today the Church celebrates the solemn entry of the Lord Jesus Christ, seated upon a young colt, unaccustomed to bearing burdens, into Jerusalem — a city full of anxiety and turmoil, long preparing to put to death the Benefactor and great Wonderworker. His solemn reception, unforeseen and unexpected by His enemies — the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees — stirred in them extreme envy and further intensified the hostility hidden in their hearts, and led them to the firm decision to kill Him, especially when the innocent children, moved by the Holy Spirit, loudly cried out to Him: Hosanna (salvation) (Matt. 21:9).

To many it seems strange that the Lord entered the city not on a horse, but on a young donkey. But in this lies a mysterious and instructive meaning: the young colt, according to the interpretation of the God-wise Fathers, signified the submission to Christ, as Messiah, of the Gentile nations, after the sons of the Kingdom, the Jews, had rejected Him. The young colt signifies that the Gentiles had not been trained in the law of God and had not borne His good and light yoke, which the Jews had despised.

Let us now give special attention to the purpose of the solemn entry into Jerusalem. The eternal King of angels and of men was not going to an earthly kingdom or throne in the capital of Judea, but to mockery, insults, spitting, blows, scourging, and the Cross — the most shameful and painful execution. He went voluntarily, in order by the Cross and on the Cross to strike down the invisible enemies who had taken captive the human race and enslaved it to their hellish, deadly, tyrannical dominion — to endure punishment for our sins, to abolish the curse, to destroy death, to overthrow its kingdom, and to grant life and resurrection to all. The people of this age, blinded in mind, who call themselves “intellectuals,” do not understand, do not comprehend why the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ were necessary, and dare to mock this divine mystery of our salvation; like pagans and Jews, they turn away from Christ and His Cross, from His Church, His divine teaching, and His saving mysteries, and they set their blind yet proud reason in place of the mind of God.

But without the sufferings and death of Christ — voluntarily undertaken by Him out of love for the human race — there would have been no reconciliation of sinful and ungrateful creatures with their all-righteous Creator, grievously offended by their unrighteousness. Without the fulfillment by the God-man of all the righteousness of God, no one could have fulfilled it or been justified and gained access to God; no one could have attained heaven; without His taking upon Himself the just curse that lay upon us, no one could have received God’s blessing; without the death assumed for us by the Son of God in His human nature, universal death would not have been conquered and there would have been no resurrection of the dead; without His ascension into heaven, heaven would not have been opened, nor would there be eternal blessedness for mankind.

This is why the God-man suffered and thus solemnly entered Jerusalem for His voluntary Passion, humbling Himself so greatly and suffering willingly. The whole Jewish world of that time, and partly the Gentile world, had to be witnesses of these terrible, all-redeeming sufferings and His death — so that, in fulfillment of prophecy, those who crucified Him would, at His Second Coming, look upon Him whom they pierced: “They shall look upon Him whom they pierced” (Zech. 12:10). Satan did not expect that Christ, suffering and dying, would conquer him and destroy his kingdom; nor did the crucifiers think that the Crucified One would conquer death and Hades. On the contrary, Satan already thought to celebrate his complete victory over Christ, and the chief priests and scribes dreamed of their triumph — and what happened? When the righteous soul of Christ was separated from the body and descended into Hades — together with His divinity — Satan saw his error and the complete victory over him of the Crucified One, who broke the eternal gates of Hades, destroyed its prison, and seized all its (Satan’s) wealth of many souls, bringing all souls out of Hades.

By the death of the Crucified One, our death was conquered; the dead who rose from their graves in Jerusalem and appeared to many visibly proved the accomplished glorious victory over death. Never has the world seen a more triumphant, glorious, all-powerful victory. Glory to You, Christ, Conqueror of Hades and death. And we also cry to You, Christ, Conqueror of death: Hosanna in the highest, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.

What then has death become in the eyes of the true Christian? Sleep. The Lord Himself, foreseeing His complete victory over death, said of the death of Lazarus, His friend, that he had fallen asleep: “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him” (John 11:11); by sleep He meant death. Rejoice, therefore, believing and good Christians! Now there is no death; Christ has destroyed death.

Fields of Nippon and Manchuria, which have hidden the bodies of our compatriots, Orthodox Russian warriors! I will not call you fields of death or graves of the dead, but fields of life, treasuries of immortality — for all the bodies of the slain warriors shall rise incorrupt and shall blossom with immortality. Listen to what a wondrous image of the resurrection of the dead the prophet of God Ezekiel gives us in the divinely inspired book of his prophecies. “The hand of the Lord was upon me,” he says, “and the Lord brought me out in the Spirit and set me down in the midst of a valley; and it was full of bones. And He led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. And He said to me: 'Son of man, can these bones live?' And I answered: 'O Lord God, You know.' Then He said to me: 'Prophesy over these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.' So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then He said to me: 'Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.' So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army” (Ezek. 37:1–10).

Here is a vivid image of the resurrection of the dead — the resurrection granted to us by Christ God, who suffered and rose from the dead, the Conqueror of death, our meek David, who went out against the spiritual Goliath — Satan, who brought death into the human race.

But our Tolstoyans do not believe in the resurrection; Tolstoy devised a new teaching, a new faith, and taught it, and led many light-minded people to believe him — he rejected the divinity of Christ and all the truths of the Gospel; he teaches that Christ’s sufferings are unnecessary for anyone, that there will be no resurrection of the dead, no Last Judgment, no eternal life, and no eternal punishment, and he teaches everyone not to repent, not to receive Communion, not to fight, not to obey authorities — in a word: he seeks to overthrow all ecclesiastical and civil order. And these are the fruits of his godless teaching: unbelief, disrespect of children toward parents, pride, disobedience and self-will of youth, refusal to submit to authority, weakness and humiliation of authority itself — in short: religious and political chaos.

Therefore the wrath of the Lord burns against His people — let me say in the words of the prophet — and He has stretched out His hand against them and struck them, so that the mountains trembled, and their corpses were like refuse in the streets. And for all this His anger is not turned away, and His hand is still stretched out (Isa. 5:25).

But may God grant faith and sincere repentance to all; be merciful to our fatherland and to the father of the fatherland, to the most Holy Synod and to all who lead and honor You with a sincere heart - to Your poor people, to the infants of whom the prophet says: “Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have perfected praise” (Ps. 8:3); and grant a swift victory and triumph to our Christ-loving army over enemies who are cunning and deceitful and do not know You. Amen.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.