So the Creator of the universe rode into the Holy City on a donkey, shouting hosannas – which means praise and worship for the one who saves. But what then?
[Wir veröffentlichen einen Gastartikel von Robert Royal* mit freundlicher Erlaubnis in eigener Übersetzung. Original hier zu finden.]
So the Creator of the universe rode into the Holy City on a donkey, shouting hosannas – which means praise and worship for the one who saves. That’s correct. But it is quite certain that barring some confused expectations regarding the “restoration” of Israel – which were mostly vaguely political in nature and intended to throw off the broad and deep state (Rome) which at that time occupied the Holy Land – the people who cried out and laid down their cloaks and palm branches, not knowing much what they were doing.
That’s a safe bet, because after 2000 years of Christian prayers, evangelism, sermons, martyrs, confessors, saints, sages, exorcists, theologians, philosophers, painters, sculptors, poets, novelists, composers and polemicists, we don’t quite get it either. Why did the Redeemer have to come into the world and do and suffer all that He will now do and suffer in order to bring about the true restoration of Israel and the whole world? In a word: to make everything new? We know what he did. We don’t know exactly why it had to be the way we remember this week.
All of this is, to use the term in theological jargon, a mystery, that is, a truth that we can contemplate because it has been revealed to us. We can say, for example, that only God himself can atone for the insult to his infinite goodness caused by original sin. But how he does it is not a question that even the most brilliant human brain could answer. It’s just beyond us. And that’s a good thing, because we need to realize that only something, or rather someone, outside of us can save us. We don’t save ourselves.
It has always been a sad public fact that leaders can trick people who might have shouted Hosanna into shouting “Crucify him” instead. Even the great pagans knew this. As one of Plato’s characters in Book II of The Republic says: “The just man of such disposition is flogged, tormented, bound, both eyes burned out, and in the end, when he has all evil has gone through, he will be crucified”.
In the past century we have witnessed a growing abandonment of Christianity and the rise of several political messiahs who promised salvation, liberation and paradise on earth. And who instead produced slaughter, misery and oppression on an industrial scale. Since the dawn of the new millennium, we have continued on our joyous human path: the murder of millions of human beings in the womb in the name of women’s liberation; promoting the mutilation of young people in the name of sexual ideologies; the belief that we can save ourselves by forcing one another into this or that political configuration.
Of course there are political things worth doing. But in the truest sense of the word he saves us: he institutes the Eucharist, goes through horrible tortures and beyond to a victory over the worst of suffering and death, his resurrection being the final triumph.
But understanding all this is especially difficult today, because more and more people who may have once called themselves Christians hardly know what he did, let alone believe it had any relevance to their lives today .
Worse still, those of us who still profess to be Christians see it all as long-established dogma that’s easy to grasp and a little too quick to take for granted.
The wise woman Flannery O’Connor knew better and, as so often, nailed it with one of her helpfully whimsical characters. This helps us regain both the surprise and freshness of the whole Easter story and really lets it speak to us about what God has done.
The Misfit, an escaped convict in her story »A good man is hard to find«puts it this way:
»He shouldn’t have done it. He has thrown everything off balance. If he did what he said then you have no choice but to drop everything and follow him, and if he hasn’t then you have no choice but to spend the few minutes you have left enjoy it as much as possible – by killing someone, or burning down their house, or doing some other mean thing to them. No pleasure but meanness.«
The outsider is a killer and he will kill again. And he phrases the case in terms that might seem like too much. But isn’t it true that the only alternative to following Christ and real salvation is to follow ourselves? Precisely because the misfit is evil and knows that evil is pervasive throughout the world, he also knows that it would take upsetting the balance – of everything – to achieve true liberation from the evils that have been with us accompany the beginning of time.
He understands the mystery we should ponder deeply this week.
Living in a democratic society is generally a good thing, especially when the system is carefully structured to prevent the demos (the people) from becoming a rampaging mob. It also needs a public culture that does not empower demagogues, politicians who cajole people into thinking that they and their own desires are good and are the yardstick for good. If you only follow the politicians – who are not always the best role models of our species – good will prevail. Only the others are evil.
Holy Week is a time when we can put polemics aside for a while. They’ll be back soon, with a vengeance. The media environment we find ourselves in right now is like a daily scourge of deliberately hyped controversies that will disappear soon enough to be replaced by others.
We need to take our eyes off all of this for a while, from ourselves and our shallow non-answers, because we need help from beyond us, from the inexhaustible mystery we cannot fathom. This week’s secret that is our only hope and salvation.
*Robert Royal is Editor-in-Chief of The Catholic Thing and President of Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, DC His most recent books are Columbus and the Crisis of the West and A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.