Editing Fast Fridays: 30 Minutes for God (section)

== Friday, Aril 11: ''Hosanna!'' ==
If you took my quiz on what does "Hosanna" mean, here's the key:<blockquote>
=== ''Hosanna'' ===

* "Lord, save us!"
** imperative for "save" thus, "please give salvation!"
* from Hebrew ''hosha'na'' for "Save us, we pray"
** taken from [https://bible.usccb.org/bible/psalms/118?25 Ps 118:25] "L<small>ORD</small>, grant salvation!* L<small>ORD</small>, grant good fortune!"

* the people sing "Hosanna" when Christ enters Jerusalem, which prefigures his saving Crucifixion and Resurrection
** which is why "Hosanna excelsis" is sung prior to the Eucharist at Sunday Mass
** thus every Sunday Mass is Palm Sunday
*** [https://bible.usccb.org/bible/psalms/118?27 Ps 118:27] cries, "Join in procession with leafy branches" (regarding triumphal entry tp Jerusalem by the king)
*** In 1 Maccabees the palms were waived at the triumphal entrance of the Jews into Jerusalem following Greek oppression ([https://bible.usccb.org/bible/1maccabees/13?51 1 Mc 13:51]):

<blockquote>On the twenty-third day of the second month,* in the one hundred and seventy-first year, the Jews entered the citadel with shouts of praise, the waving of palm branches, the playing of harps and cymbals and lyres, and the singing of hymns and canticles, because a great enemy of Israel had been crushed.</blockquote>and in [https://bible.usccb.org/bible/2maccabees/10:7 2 Mc 10:7], when under Maccabeus the jews cleanse (purify) the temple of having been "profaned by the foreigners" ([https://bible.usccb.org/bible/2maccabees/10?5 2 Mac 10:5]):<blockquote>Carrying rods entwined with leaves, beautiful branches and palms, they sang hymns of grateful praise to him who had successfully brought about the purification of his own place.</blockquote></blockquote>Isn't that amazing about Book of Maccabees?  So many bookends in the Bible you'd never think of.
----The question I posed for this week is why did the Jews turn so quickly on Jesus? 

It's an easy answer to say that the priestly class riled them up, and they did, per [https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/27:20 Matthew 27:20], <blockquote>The chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas but to destroy Jesus.</blockquote>Certainly the believers in Christ didn't show up for Pilates presentation of him to the crowd, but persuasion builds, it doesn't just happen. So the people had to be disposed to it to some degree. 

Our definition of "hosanna", I think, more completely answers the question: they expected King David and got instead a guy who knocks over the tables and talks in parables, two of which help us, The Wedding Feast ([https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/22:1 Mt 22:1-14]) and The Ten Virgins ([https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/25:1 Mt 25 1-13]). 

In the Wedding Feast, the King sends his servants to gather celebrants at the Wedding feast for his son. There's more to it, but everyone is too busy -- the Jews, and so the King sends his servants out to the "main roads" to gather" the "bad and good alike" -- the gentiles (so it's not just a warning for the Jews, as the gentile who showed up looking like a shlub got "cast into the darkness".)  The Ten Virgins is about the foolish virgins who don't prepare oil for their lamps, so cannot meet the bridegroom. 

Of course if Jesus had ridden in on the donkey like David, then rained fire, like at Sodom, upon the Romans. Anything less was simply disappointing. Their idea of "hosanna," "Lord save us" was about this world not the next. Jesus makes the point most literally to the disciples in withering the fig tree ([https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/21:18 Mt 21:18-22]), which "amazes" them that it "withered immediately." 

We discussed how that fig tree is another Old Testament bookend, as we can think of it as the equivalent of the Tree of Knowledge, which Satan told Eve would make her and Adam "like Gods" ([https://bible.usccb.org/bible/genesis/3:5 Gen 3:5]). The Tree of Knowledge brought death, and Jesus here kills the fig tree in its own mortality, as "Hosanna" is not for this but the next world.

A happy and blessed Holy Week and Easter celebration to you!