TODAY, OUR SAVIOR ENTERS his royal city not on a regal stallion displaying the spoils of military conquest, but riding a lowly donkey, treading over palm branches, welcomed by ordinary people, only days away from his Passion and Death. On Palm Sunday, we begin Holy Week in a Scripturally unique way. We first hear the Gospel proclaiming Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, then we fast-forward and hear the Passion narrative ending with Jesus’ death and entombment. This sets our focus on the heart of our salvation: the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus. We are not yet celebrating Easter, but immersing ourselves into what Jesus, the fully human and fully divine Son of God, does for each and every one of us, and all those before and after us: He saves us; but from what and how and why? Before the Fall, Adam and Eve enjoyed an original, created state of justice, living in right relationship with God and each other. They experienced a constant state of grace, a participation in the divine life, perfect harmony between Creator and creature. Because of the Fall when our ancestors attempted to be god-like without God, humanity lost sanctifying grace and sin entered the world. Disorder and disharmony followed. The just punishment for rejection of God’s eternal life was eternal death. This “original” sin transmits a wounded human nature from Adam and Eve to all who follow.
Several Church Fathers looked deeply into the mystery of how we are saved. Among them, Saint Anselm, who in the 11th century explained our salvation in a teaching known as the “Satisfaction Theory,” expounding that Jesus’ suffering and death serve as atonement for us, restoring our right relationship with God. He summarized the dilemma in a succinct but profound way: only we owe the debt, but we cannot pay it; only God can pay the debt, but he does not owe it; therefore, only a God-man – Jesus in the Incarnation – can make the necessary restitution. Humanity had incurred an infinite debt (all sin, including original sin, throughout all time) that only God could repay in the person of Jesus Christ, himself true God and true man. Because Christ fully assumed our sinful humanity, He was able to do what imperfect humanity could not. Jesus substitutes himself in our stead, not to receive God’s wrath, not as a victim of divine anger, but because as Son of God and human without sin, he, alone, loves God perfectly. It is Jesus’ perfect love of God that saves us. His suffering and death are not the means of our salvation, but the visible expression of his perfect love and obedience to the Father, a gift of life that defeats sin, death, hell and eternal unhappiness.
That saving love is not merely an abstract concept; rather, it is an intimate love for each person—past, present and future—exemplified by Jesus, walking and suffering with us; and is ultimately expressed in his Passion and Death. Our salvation is won by this unparalleled, unequaled love on Calvary, amid chaotic human disfunction—betrayal, scapegoating, mob violence, torture—so much so that “darkness came over the whole land (Mt. 27:45),” the polar extreme from God’s positive Creation command: “Let there be light (Gen.1:3).” The Good News is that the love displayed on the Cross leads to the light of the Resurrection. Christ enters the darkness only to overcome it. What began with suffering ends with glory; what appeared to be defeat becomes the victory of divine love.
Our Savior, the Son of God, rode a donkey to meet his Death. Hosanna. And it is this love—perfect, obedient and without limit—that restores us to communion with God and opens for us the path to eternal life. Hosanna in the Highest.