Satan as 'the prince of this world'—cast out by Christ
The voice from Heaven confirmed Christ's mission and the beginning of the end for Satan's Empire.
The voice from Heaven confirmed Christ's mission and the beginning of the end for Satan's Empire.
Editor’s Notes
In this Part, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How Christ reveals that fruitfulness for Himself and His servants depends on death.
That the entire mission of redemption rests on sacrifice—first His, then that of his followers.
Why the Father confirms Christ’s claims with a voice from Heaven, proclaiming divine glory.
Fr Coleridge shows us that this is the moment when the world is judged and Satan overthrown by the Cross and all who follow it.
There is so much material that we could share during Holy Week. Rather than trying to provide it all, we will instead focus on how and why Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem provides a key to the whole of his blessed and glorious Passion.
The Procession of Palms
Passiontide, Part I, Chapter II
St. Matt. xxi. 14-17; St. Mark xi. 1-11; St. Luke xix. 29-44; St. John xii. 12-18.
Story of the Gospels, § 132
Burns and Oates, London, 1889
Headings and some line breaks added.
Sung on Palm Sunday
Our Lord casts reserve aside and enters Jerusalem as Christ the King
What was it about Palm Sunday that most surprised the Pharisees?
The grain of wheat
‘Amen, amen, I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, itself remaineth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’
And now that the extension of His Kingdom was so near and its promise almost before His eyes, in the persons of the Gentiles, the rejoicing thought rose up in His mind which these words express.
At the same time our Lord seems to have passed on in thought to those who were to be His instruments in the great work, as is the case on the former occasion. But now it is no longer the reapers and sowers who rise to His mind as such, but the ministers of the Word, who have to labour after the pattern of their Master, and if not lay down their lives like their Master. It is to be true of them as well as of Himself, and it is to be true to the end of time, that ‘unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die itself remaineth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’
Not all the ministers of the Word of God are actually to die for their work, but a great proportion of them are to die actually, and the rest are to die in spirit though not actually. And the fruitfulness of the Word depends on their mortification, as well as on the death of their Master, which is the source of all fruitfulness. He did not then speak of Himself only, but of the general law of the Kingdom, which exacts the sacrifice of the ministers by whom the Word is preached.
‘He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world, keepeth it unto life eternal. If any man minister unto Me, let him follow Me, and where I am there shall also My minister be.’
These words correspond, in the present discourse, to those which He had before uttered about those that sow and those that reap rejoicing together. It is something greater for the servant to be where our Lord Himself is for ever, than for those who sow and those who reap to rejoice together. And He goes on to something still greater.
‘If any man minister to Me, him will My Father honour.’
The Son Himself is to be glorified, and a part of His glorification is to consist in the honouring of His servants for the work which is accomplished by them through and for Him.
The voice of the Father
‘Now is My soul troubled. And what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour? But for this cause I came to this hour. Father, glorify Thy Name.
‘A voice therefore came from Heaven, I have both glorified it and will glorify it again. The multitude therefore that stood and heard, said that it thundered. Others said, An angel hath spoken to Him.
‘Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of Me, but for your sakes.’
For our Lord was constantly on the watch to exclude the possibility of their forming inadequate opinions concerning Him, as if He were a mere man, when any supernatural manifestation on the part of His Father occurred. Thus, in the miracle of Lazarus, when He gave thanks to His Father for hearing Him, He added:
‘I know that Thou hearest Me always, but because of the people who stand around I have said it, that they may believe that Thou hast sent Me.’
And He does not meet the supposition about the Angel speaking to Him, for the words were the words of the Father, although the sounds may have been formed in the air by the ministration of angels, as is ordinarily the case at such times, and it may not have seemed to Him worth while to explain how far they were the words of His Father and how far those of an angel.
He then went on to speak summarily of the momentous occasion on which the words had been spoken. It was nothing less than a voice from Heaven of the Eternal Father, which had not been vouchsafed, save on two other occasions in the Gospel history, as far as we are told, at the Baptism by St. John, and at the Transfiguration.
Now the Eternal Father declared from Heaven He both had glorified and would further glorify His Name, we may suppose, by the manifestation of the Day of Palms, among the other mysteries of the Life of our Lord, and that He would carry out to the full the gracious counsel, the accomplishment of which had been foreshadowed and promised by what had taken place that day.
Never before had there been so public a proclamation of the Divine Kingdom of our Lord, never before had such words been put into the mouths of men, as had been heard on that day from the crowds who sang Hosanna to the Son of David, to Him that was coming in the name of the Lord. Our Lord commented aloud on these words of His Eternal Father for the benefit of the bystanders, among whom we may suppose that the Gentiles had taken their place.
He chose death—and broke the spine of an evil empire.
It just wasn’t the empire that the Jews hoped he would break.
Keep reading to see how the Cross shattered Satan’s dominion and judged the world.
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