Vanquishing Death

Over the centuries, the city of Jerusalem had seen many kings and conquerors enter its gates. They came in full armor, standing on chariots with hundreds of soldiers in their entourage. However, Jerusalem had never seen anyone like Jesus before. Like the others, He came to lay claim to the city as its King and Savior. However, unlike them, He rode a young horse, wearing the tunic of a poor Jewish carpenter with fishermen, beggars, prostitutes and tax collectors in His entourage.

Nonetheless, the people came from all over the city waving palm branches and laying their cloaks in the street to welcome Him as their King and Savior. They recognized that He wielded a different kind of power than those other kings who brought swords and soldiers with them. Those kings could only assert their authority over other men and kingdoms. Jesus has a greater authority. He commands demons and they come shrieking out of those they have possessed. He has authority over sickness. He multiplies loaves and fishes, walks on water and even raises the dead.

Jesus comes to the city to fight a battle against our bitterest enemy - Death. Every king who entered into Jerusalem, no matter how powerful, eventual had to succumb to death. Jesus came not only to conquer a city but to conquer a kingdom - the kingdom of Death. During this week, He will take on Himself all the cruelties that man can deliver - insults, tortures and, finally, crucifixion. He will hand His spirit over to His Father, be laid in a tomb and go down to the nether world. Like every human being, He will experience Death. However, He will rise on the third day as He promised. He survives even Death. It has no more power over Him.

Many kings have come since Jesus, one more powerful than the next. They have commanded continents, found more sophisticated ways of subjugating their enemies and developed terrifying weapons. As mighty as they have all seemed, none has been able to conquer Death. Not even in our own day, with all the advances we have made in science and technology, has any sane person claimed to have found a “cure” for Death.  Only Jesus can make that claim. Do we not have to admit, then, that He is the most powerful man who has ever lived? And, if He is, then must we not swear our allegiance to Him as our King and Savior?

If the words that the people cry out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!...Hosanna in the highest!”, sound familiar, it is because they are the same words we use at Mass just before the Eucharistic prayer: “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts! Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!” With these words we welcome Jesus, our King and Savior, into this temple. We acknowledge that our Risen Lord is present in our midst. We celebrate His victory over sin and death.

In this place, He also makes a promise to us. If we believe in Him, if we make Him the Lord of our life, He will share His victory over Death with us. He says, “Those who eat the bread that I will give will never die but will have eternal life.” When we eat the body He offered upon the cross and drink from the chalice which is the blood of the new covenant, His eternal life passes into us. We will still have to fight our own battle with Death and, like Jesus, our heart will stop beating and we will hand over our spirit to the Father in Heaven. However, like Jesus, we will pass on to a new and everlasting life. We will be raised again with Jesus and Death will no longer be able to threaten us again or separate us from those we love. The victory is ours if we believe and welcome Jesus as the Lord of our hearts.

We begin this Holy Week commemorating Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Though He was the most powerful man to ever walk the earth, He humbled Himself to experience Death for our sakes so that we could enter into the everlasting life that He has with God in Heaven. The best way to remember His great love is not by waving palm branches but by having the same humble attitude He did, as Saint Paul urges us in today’s second reading from the Letter to the Philippians. We must live His victory over sin and death by overcoming our own temptations, alleviating the suffering of those around us and struggling against the current culture of death which denies the dignity and right to life of every human being. Then, when Jesus comes again to take possession of the whole world, we can bend the knee with all creation and cry out, “Jesus Christ is Lord!” to the glory of God the Father.