Below is the full text of Fr. Romanus Cessario's homily for Palm Sunday, which he delivered yesterday at St. John's Seminary in Boston, MA.

"Open wide the doors and gates.
Lift high the ancient portals.
The King of glory enters" (Ps 23:9)

Since at least the fourth century, Christians have formed the ritual procession with which we began this Palm Sunday Mass. The fourth century is significant. It reminds us that once the Church enjoyed the freedom to worship in public, our forerunners in faith set about to display publically certain happenings in Christ's life. They knew that these events held a significance greater than that of an everyday biography, greater too than the recalling of a leader's heroic acts. They understood, therefore, that neither narrative nor remembering would suffice to commemorate these sacred events. Instead, the Catholics of fourth-century Palestine set about to enact the mysteries of Christ's life in the very place where Christ brought these mysteries of faith into existence for the sake of the whole world.

Because of the extended treatment that the Gospels give to those things that transpired within Holy Week, the earliest Catholics paid special attention to what surrounds the supreme moment in Christ's life. His death. There is no record of Christians dramatizing the Sermon on the Mount. However, they did reenact Christ's entrance into Jerusalem. And then on the days following, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, the other mysteries. The reason for their choice is simple to discover. Holy Week centers on Christ's sufferings and death. Specifically, Holy Week moves forward to that moment when Christ cries out, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (Lk 23:46). At these words, Christ completes the saving work of love and obedience that stands at the source of the Church's outpouring of divine grace.

The Church today refers to the benefits that Christ's death brings to the world as his merit and satisfaction. Throughout Holy Week, the Liturgy of the Church affords us the opportunity to appreciate in new and unexpected ways what it means to live by Christ's merits and what it means to be transformed by his satisfactory work. In short, we discover what makes Christian existence unique, irreplaceable, and, in the final analysis, indispensable. Indispensable, that is, should one want to see God. Indispensable for living a happy life. We merit grace, we satisfy for our sins, and we move on to the Heavenly Jerusalem. Procession therefore, as Deacon Daniel Moloney told us, remains the preferred metaphor for Christian living.

*

The procession on Palm Sunday differs from other processions of the Church's liturgical year. Ordinarily, the priest walks at the end of a procession, the place of honor in these ceremonial movements. Today, however, the priest marches first. He leads the procession. The Gospel supplies the historical explanation. The disciples accompanied Jesus into Jerusalem. It is Jesus, the King of glory, who enters the Holy City. Others follow. Nonetheless, one may ask why Jesus did not enter Jerusalem at the end of a long and impressive procession. Such processions were not unknown in the ancient Near East. Even today, in the exhibits on Berlin's Museumsinsel, one can see the Processional Way built by the Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562BC), to accommodate the long lines of attendants preceding the royal personages. It was this monarch who deported Israel to captivity in Babylon and ended the historical succession of the Davidic dynasty. This territorial king enjoyed considerable importance, as human beings judge a person's worth. Christ-we learn in today's gospel-does not observe the customs followed by those "kings of the Gentiles" (Lk 22:25) who lord it over their subjects.

This year the Passion narrative comes from the Gospel of Luke. It is St. Luke who reports the angels' prophecy to the Blessed Virgin Mary that the Child to be born of her womb would occupy the Davidic throne (Lk 1:32). "The children of Jerusalem welcomed Christ the King...Hosanna to the Son of David!" When, however, the time arrived for the fulfillment of the angel's promise, we find Jesus sitting on the back of a colt, a lowly beast. He eschews the strong lions and proud bulls that adorned King Nebuchadnezzar's royal route. Christ advances with improvised palm branches for his flabella. He leaves aside the regal signs of secular dominion and power. Hosanna Filio David. Christ advances to the beat of spontaneous exclamatory outcries. No composed triumphal march for the King of glory. Hosanna Filio David. The message is clear: Christ enters Jerusalem ready for a different kind of conquest than those victories won by secular rulers of all ages, including of ancient Babylonia.

The place that the priest occupies at the beginning of a Palm Sunday procession takes on a special significance during the Year for Priests. Today's procession reminds us that the Catholic priest finds his proper, natural place at the Head of the Christian people. The liturgical novelty of Palm Sunday possesses additional significance in a Catholic seminary. Here young men learn about spiritual Headship. As contemporary events indicate, the lesson is difficult to teach and more difficult to implement. It is difficult to teach because the human analogues for Headship rapidly are disappearing. Yesterday's New York Times reported that children no longer possess the basic social skills to coexist peacefully on the playground. So schools are hiring "recess coaches." Headship is difficult to implement because we find ourselves in a period when many regard authority more with suspicion than respect. Sadly, spiritual Headship, the authority of the priest-the authority of Christ-is subject to the most serious misgivings. These here-and-now circumstances produce inconveniences. They change, however, nothing of the dynamics of Palm Sunday. Throughout the Catholic world, priests, representing the Christ in whose person and name they act, still lead Christ's faithful across the lintels that mark the entrances to the churches of the world. "Open wide the doors and gates. Lift high the ancient portals. The King of glory enters" (Ps 23:9). Nothing changes. Nothing will change. Seminarians must implore still the grace to represent Christ the Head.

*

By liturgical design, Catholic churches everywhere represent the mystical Jerusalem. The place of kings. The place of prophets. The place of priests. The priests who lead today's processions as well as the seminarians who prepare to replace them cannot escape the stark reality that Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem signals a strategy for victory that only Catholic faith reveals. Rather than serve as a cause for alarm, this provision of divine providence should inspire brave young men to embrace the grace to be a priest, even as both seminarians and priests alike recognize the challenges that confront even the best efforts to exercise the priestly office. Christ could have come as King only. He did not. He came as the Crucified King.

Jerusalem is the city of kings. The city of King David. Christ's entry into this Holy City symbolically represents the Headship that he exercises by reason of his divine status and his human sufferings. Our First Head failed the human race. Poor Adam left us acephalous, without a head. As the Old Testament makes plain, from the moment that Adam forfeited his Headship, things fell apart. Man fell apart. The New Adam reverses the ancient curse. He establishes a new order. The Pastors of the Church implement this order when they exercise the grace of divine and ecclesial governance. Priests establish an order that human nature by itself cannot achieve. This new order is realized in the parish, in the diocese, and in the worldwide community at the center of which stands the successor of Peter. Only the Pope governs a transpolitical religion. This is the case because Christ's Kingdom is not of this world (see Jn 18:36). So Christ himself reminds his first disciples that the headship of the Catholic priest manifests itself as a service, that is, as a divine gift to the human race.

Jerusalem is the city of prophets. Ezekiel, for instance, announced the expectation that Jerusalem would be rebuilt after the Babylonian Captivity (see Ezk 36:28). Jerusalem represents, even to this day, a place of eschatological expectations. Catholic priests, however, are not ordained to predict future events. Priests find themselves in possession of actualized saving Truth. Their prophetic book is the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Priests teach. The truth of Catholic and divine faith requires such authoritative teachers. The reason for this arrangement emerges from the nature of faith. There are no demonstrative proofs for divine revelation. The only guarantee of revealed truth is God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. Priests preach and teach authoritatively in the Church not because they are great orators or outstanding pedagogues. They possess authority inasmuch as saving truth is confided only to them. Just as they alone govern the Church, priests alone teach authoritatively in the Church. Only Catholic priests know how to enter the New Jerusalem. What about those who betray the sacred responsibility to announce the Way? Christ himself pronounces judgment: "Woe to that man" (Lk 22:22).

Jerusalem is the city of priests. Today Christ enters the Jerusalem where Herod the Great (37-4) rebuilt the Temple. The sacrifices of the old law directed men to God, and fulfilled during the period of their efficacy the religious obligations incumbent on the People of Israel. Christ changes this provision. His entrance into Jerusalem finds its objective, its telos, its end on Good Friday. Then Christ offers the one salvation in which he delivered himself to God for an odor of sweetness. "Live in love," admonishes St Paul, "as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma" (Eph 5:2). What better reason is there to explain why a young man should surrender to the grace of Christ's priesthood? Only priests enact each day on the altars of the world the same sacrifice that saves the world. "A sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma."

Kings, prophets, priests. Today Christ enters the Holy City. He enters Jerusalem where the acts of salvation were prefigured. Now, during the Week we call Holy, Christ completes these figures, turning them into realities. Of these sacred realities, the priests of the new and eternal covenant, Catholic priests, remain the only authentic and effective ministers.

*

To dwell on the priestly dimensions of Palm Sunday provides the most inclusive approach one could adopt to prepare for the graces of Holy Week. Everybody benefits from priestly ministry. Pope. Bishops. Priests themselves. The Mystical Body of Christ, his members. No one is excluded from the procession to the New Jerusalem. Indeed, all are bidden to join it. All are invited to march behind the Catholic priest. Bear in mind, however, that no substitute exists for the Procession we formed at the start of the Mass. The palms that we will keep in our homes until Ash Wednesday remind us that there is only one Procession that the King of glory heads. This one. Is God prejudiced? Of course not. He simply observes the logic of the Gift. He gives the Gift. He establishes the conditions for man to receive it. To exchange one day the frondage of Palm Sunday for the palm of victory requires that one believe in the King of glory. This saving, justifying faith flourishes best when the Church is adorned with many holy priests who govern, teach, and sanctify. Just like Christ himself.