As Christ enters Jerusalem on the Sunday before His passion, St. Matthew tells us that the children began to shout, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” St. Luke tells us that the Pharisees asked Christ to silence His disciples. He responded: “I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.”
Something wonderful is taking place as Christ comes to Jerusalem. The King returns to claim His throne (the Cross is frequently described as a “throne” in Orthodox hymnography). That which had been hidden from all ages was moving towards the moment of its revelation. The veil between humanity and God was shortly to be taken away.
Who wouldn’t shout and sing?
Noisy, conflicted souls, for one. Darkened and hardened souls for another.
Children and stones have something in common: they are neither conflicted, darkened, nor hardened. They have a cleanness and simplicity that sings and shouts when everything else is trapped in its own miasma.
I have heard confessions for over forty years. Listening to an adult, you can often hear the tension and torment within a soul. We are often confused about our sin, just as we are unsure of the path towards goodness. Listening to a child is instructive. They are not without sin, but generally, they know the difference between right and wrong and can be surprisingly straight-forward. From my perspective as a confessor, I frequently come away with a sense of awe. It is little wonder to me that Christ issued such a serious warning to anyone who would cause a child to stumble.
But the wounds come. Staying in a single parish for decades affords the experience of watching someone go from childhood to adult. There is a slow process that tracks the accumulation of soul-wounds. What was once simplicity and relative purity slips into the complexity and confusion that haunts the inner life of our adult worlds. Listening to children, I pray within myself, “Lord, when did I ever speak so clearly, so cleanly?”
Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me.” (Matt. 18:2-5)
The wounds come. None of us escapes the hurt and pain of human relationships. No parents are perfect. No siblings are ideal. Classmates and even best friends engage in shaming and bullying. Teachers, in their own brokenness, unwittingly give unintended lessons to a child. Over time, the conflict, the darkness and the hardening set in. We lose our capacity for awe and wonder and with it a clear view of the world. Our access to God seems blocked by the opacity of our own wounds. Reason cannot get us there. The wounds are deeper than that.
Christ descends into this world of wounds in the Incarnation. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it. But, in many cases, the darkness seeks to assert its will. From the very beginning the darkness sought to kill the Christ Child and we see that opposition continue throughout His ministry. But Christ came into the darkness in order to heal it.
He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become children of God… (John 1:11–12)
There seems to be a strong emphasis in Christ’s ministry towards healing the lame and the blind. St. Matthew tells us that after the triumphal entry into Jerusalem Christ cleansed the Temple.
Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them. (Matt. 21:14)
This is where we often find ourselves. Blind, we see darkness instead of light. Lame, we seem frozen, unable to change or to move closer to our goal. But Christ sits in the Temple, the place of the deep heart, and begins the patient work that is our salvation. To as many as receive Him, He gives power to become children – to enter the Kingdom of God.
Being an adult, much less being an old man in the eighth decade of life, it is easy to be deceived into thinking that childhood is something long past. I have had some significant decades through the years, but my thoughts (our thoughts) constantly come back to the first decade of life – the time of childhood. Those years have a primacy in our lives that never wanes. It is those primary years that echo through each of the following decades, revisiting themselves in the midst of changing circumstances, ringing changes on the bells that were hung in those earliest years.
My paternal grandfather, on his death-bed, called for his mother. The year was 1989 – his mother died in 1928. Having reached his end, he reached for his beginning and an innocence that had long been buried. His other words came steadily as he moved in and out of consciousness: “Lord, have mercy!”
In the West, the traditional prayer to the Mother of God concludes in this manner: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death.” When Christ entered Jerusalem, his mother was with him. Her presence is not mentioned until He is crucified. But she is there, at the hour of His death, her own soul pierced by the sword that had been foretold.
It was in this time in the Holy City that Christ said:
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!”
The Savior has entered the Temple. We pray, “Hide me beneath the shadow of Your wings!” May God gather his children, and may we be numbered among them.
With the stones we cry, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”
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