scenes from Holy Week: Palm Sunday

The seven days after Palm Sunday leading to Easter are sometimes called “Holy Week,” and each day presents scene or episodes that I think over and contemplate and I would like to invite readers to do that with me. 

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Sunday presented the so-called “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem:

12On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, 13Took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord. 14And Jesus, when he had found a young ass, sat thereon; as it is written, 15Fear not, daughter of Zion: behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass’s colt. 16These things understood not his disciples at the first: but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were written of him, and that they had done these things unto him. 17The people therefore that was with him when he called Lazarus out of his grave, and raised him from the dead, bare record. 18For this cause the people also met him, for that they heard that he had done this miracle. 19The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing? behold, the world is gone after him.

The palm tree was traditionally a symbol of victory in Roman culture and a symbol of peace and plentitude in the Jewish one. The palm is also a symbol for the Sun—a correspondence stemming from the radial arrangement of its fronds when viewed from above, and the general correlation of palms with sunny climes.¹

Hence, the palm fronds strewn in the way of Christ’s procession into Jerusalem symbolize the nature of the event. But the “Triumphal Entry” is so-called with no small amount of tongue-in-cheek because, whereas many had expected the Messiah to ride in on a white horse and an army in tow to conquer the Holy City and reclaim it from the gentiles, the reality is far from this. Instead, the true Messiah enters Jerusalem “meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass,” as the Gospel According to Matthew puts it.

The full verse of Matthew 21:5, as in the comparable verse quotes above from the Gospel According to John, is:

Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass

and represents one among countless instances in which Jesus’ appearance, as recounted in the New Testament, embodies the fulfillment of a prophecy set forth in the Old. Specifically, in this case, the reference is to Zechariah 9:9:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.

Of course, as John observed:

These things understood not his disciples at the first: but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were written of him, and that they had done these things unto him.

They don’t see because of their preconceptions. Expectations harden our hearts.

Nine time Greek Nobel Laureate Nikos Kazantzakis remarked that:

Everything in the world has a hidden meaning. . . . Men, animals, trees, stars, they are all hieroglyphics. When you see them you do not understand them. You think they are really men, animals, trees, stars. It is only years later that you understand.

Of course, it’s not exactly that the meaning itself is hidden or not there for us; rather it is us who are not there for it. Boethius explains:

People think that the totality of their knowledge depends on the nature and capacity to be known of the objects of knowledge. But this is all wrong. Everything that is known is comprehended not according to its own nature, but according to the ability to know of those who do the knowing.

What do I need to do to become the “good earth” in which these seeds can take root “and bringeth forth much fruit”?

Rudolf Steiner, in the lineage of the Hermitic tradition, gives the following correspondences for this day:

Sunday

• planet: Sun

• quality: abundance

• color: white

• vowel: au

• organ: heart

• metal: gold

• tree: ash

  

  Entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem (1320) by Pietro Lorenzetti: entering the city on a donkey symbolizes arrival in peace rather than as a war-waging king arriving on a horse.

The artistic representation of the elements of outer nature only entered into art later on. When men no longer realised that palms were used to express the sun forces, they began to think that the ancients simply imitated the palm in their designs.

1. —Rudolf Steiner, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19140607p01.html