Glory to Jesus Christ!
The Great Fast has come to an end. Yesterday, the Church observed Lazarus Saturday — the resurrection of Lazarus. In the Gospel according to John, we see that Jesus loved in a truly human way. Standing at the tomb of Lazarus, who had been in the grave for four days, when the stone was rolled away and the smell of decay was present, Jesus wept. He revealed His personal love.
For we are capable of loving a concrete person — authentically and sincerely. It is easy to say in an abstract way, “I love humanity.” But let us try to love those who are close to us.
And we see that the Creator of the universe — of those billions of galaxies with countless solar systems — the Creator of our own solar system, our sun, our earth, you and me — has come to stand among us. Being born as a child, He grew to adulthood, healed, taught, preached, and even raised the dead.
Today’s Sunday leads us into the Great and Holy Week — the time when the story of our salvation reaches its fulfillment.
Brothers and sisters, in this cathedral we embrace with love a person who once sat in these pews, who spent much of her time here and who, for 30 years, adorned this church. Iconographer Christine Dochwat passed away three days ago. Her funeral will take place on Bright Tuesday.
I ask you to remember her in your prayers. You may read about her in our online newspaper "The Way". She was a remarkable woman who decorated more than 80 churches. Imagine this: in this church alone, there are up to 55 icons. Such work cannot be accomplished without a special gift — all these mosaics, all these portraits. She loved the Church because she knew that God loved her, and she wanted each of us to see and experience that love.
She greeted Christ with the words: “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”
In these days, God becomes very close. We heard how Mary anointed the feet of Jesus with myrrh and wiped them with her hair. What profound intimacy! So much so that Judas turned away.
And how often we, too, turn away from this closeness of God, because we do not believe that He loves us so deeply that He gives His life for us.
How better can this truth be conveyed than through the events we are about to experience in the coming days?
The people felt this. Jerusalem went out to meet Him. Yet it was precisely this love that led the religious leaders to say: “We must put a stop to this. This is too much. This does not fit into our categories: Who is God? How does He act? How does salvation take place?”
We often try to place God within our own limits. But the Lord breaks all boundaries. He shatters the gates of hell. He breaks the chains of our sin.
That is why Jerusalem went out to greet Him with palm branches.
We all desire to live. We see that war, killing, and the shedding of blood stand against our very nature. We long to be freed from this.
And today, into our lives, into this church, into our hearts, into our families, the Lord enters.
Let us receive Him with joy, as Jerusalem did on that day — but let us receive Him knowing what will follow this Sunday.
Let us not allow ourselves to move so easily from “Hosanna” to “Crucify Him.”
Let us open ourselves to God who comes in the name of the Lord to save each one of us — you, me, every person. And He does this not ideologically, not theoretically, not abstractly, but from heart to heart.
Dear brothers and sisters, we celebrate a great feast. We are in the presence of God. Before us are these holy days, which answer the deepest questions of the human soul. Let us not reduce this to something trivial.
Let us take part in the services that reveal the truth to us and give us a powerful hope — a hope that neither war, nor death, nor sin, nor our personal struggles can overcome, if we are with Christ, if we are in the Cross.
So, dear brothers and sisters, I greet you with this truth: God is close to our pain, close to our death. During this week, He will enter into its very darkness, and through His Passion and Resurrection, He grants us eternal life.
There is no greater truth and no greater joy.
May it be ours.
May it be yours.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
