Dear St. Rita Families,

Today we enter into Holy Week! It is always a week of many graces, which are given in order to strengthen us to weather the many trials that often accompany this week as well. I can only imagine the mindset of Our Lord Himself as He rode that donkey into Jerusalem to the cries and cheers of believers, knowing that soon enough that the cheers of his friends would be replaced by the jeers of his murderers. And yet He still rode into Jerusalem as the humble, conquering King, not swayed by the prospect of tribulations to come, but sure and confident in His Victory.

His Victory, of course, is also our Victory, since in Him and in Him alone we conquer sin and death, and all the trials of life. It is good for us to notice the marks of His Victory – the marks of His Kingship here in this world. The King of the Jews enters into Jerusalem on a donkey – and a borrowed donkey at that! Not exactly a regal, stately animal, but the Lord of the Universe condescends to use this lowly beast of burden to enter into His capital city.

What joy for the donkey! How was it that he was chosen? All in the Lord’s plan, of course. And how many of us – like this donkey – have been chosen by the Lord to show forth His Kingship, untied from our yokes that kept us bound and unable to play our part in the Lord’s mission? Sure, he had to carry God Himself on his back, but that was not a source of bitterness, but of gratitude. Even that lowly nothing of a donkey was used by God to fulfill the prophecies of old. So, there is hope for you and for me!

In His humility, Christ is not afraid to be associated with the lowly, to use them for great things, and to raise them up. The world knows that the servants of Christ often have quite difficult backgrounds. St. Paul reminds the Corinthians of this fact: “Consider your own call, brethren. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many powerful, not many of noble birth” (1 Cor 1:26). Those qualities, esteemed highly by men, are not necessary for God’s work to be accomplished, and indeed they are sometimes obstacles instead.

And by human standards, Christ was none of those things. The people themselves ask, “Is he not the son of the carpenter?…Where did this man get all this?” (Mt 13:55-56). But Christ is not content with this type of rejection. He takes it a step further, and precisely in that step, He manages to get His executioners to acknowledge Him as King and themselves as having rejected Him. Pilate has the title “King of the Jews” inscribed above Jesus on the Cross, hanging where the legal charge against Him would go. So, Pilate acknowledges the truth about Jesus and has Him killed for it.

Our Lord’s cryptic response in the Passion narratives when asked whether He is King of the Jews (by Pilate) or the Son of God (by the Sanhedrin) also implies the same recognition of Him as King, Messiah, God. “You say so” (Mt 26:64, 27:11; Lk 22:70, 23:3, etc.) is a phrase that avoids answering the questions directly, but which tells Our Lord’s interlocutors that by doing what they are doing and saying what they are saying, they are acknowledging Our Lord as King, Messiah, and God. This is because by murdering Him, they are actually fulfilling the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament in Him. Furthermore, their hearts are so far from God that by rejecting Our Lord, they prove Him to be God, since they had accepted everyone else. In other words, because of their persistence in sin, they would have accepted on some level any prophet who arose, unless that prophet were God.

Continuing with the Passion, we see Our Lord clothed in a purple garment – the color of royalty – in order to mock His claim of Kingship. He is given a reed as a scepter, and they beat Him with it. Finally, in order to make the image complete, they give Him a throne and nail Him to it. Such is the image of Christian Kingship in this world: One who, accepting the law of the land (that agitating the people so much could lead to death), allows Himself to be led away to death.

Hopefully you can see in His Passion and Death Jesus’ mastery over Himself and over the whole world. Not cowed by the threats of the wicked nor by the frailty of the flesh, Jesus remains perfectly obedient to the Father and is mightily rewarded for it. Nothing and no one can shake Him, because He is humble. He has nothing in this life that He grasps on to, and He surrenders all things to the Father.

This surrender, detachment, and humility constitute our way to Victory as well. Free of early ties, Our Lord is able to be a total and complete witness to the Father, “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15). That image is what He desires to reproduce in us, and in that conformity to Christ we find our ultimate Victory.

In Christ,
Fr. Christensen