Floral (Palm) Sunday

Brothers and sisters in Christ—

     Today we celebrate the Lord’s entry into Jerusalem before the Passover.  This Passover was the third since the beginning of the Lord’s public ministry.  He had prophesied that it was to be His last before entering into His suffering.

The empty glory of the world

     Six days before the Passover, He enters into Jerusalem in a royal and triumphal procession.  The people, in the context of this procession, proclaim that this is the King of Israel, the Messiah, Whom God chose and anointed to liberate Israel from slavery and humiliation.  The spirit of optimism fills all hearts, and even the whole atmosphere, since it seems that all biblical prophecy is close to fulfillment.  Yet, only the Lord knows that the acclamation of the people is empty, for He foresees with His Divine Mind His Suffering and Death, which are His destiny for the salvation of all people.  That which the Holy Apostle John said of Him during the first pilgrimage to Jerusalem is still true: “Now when He was at Jerusalem, at the Pasch, upon the festival day, many believed in his name, seeing his miracles, which he did. But Jesus did not trust himself to them, because he knew all men. And because he needed not that any should give testimony of man: for he knew what was in man.” Now also, He does not entrust Himself to them. He accepts their praise, but He knows that all of this ends in mockery and humiliation.

The benefit of friendship with God, instead of the world’s acclamation

     In this way, our Lord is also our model, since we also should not seek the praise of this world, and if my receive this acclamation, we should not trust in it.  The human life, which seeks worldly honour is empty, but friendship with God is eternal.  We know that if we choose friendship with God as our priority, then we need to do what is right without reference to the opinion of other people, just as the Prophet Isaiah says of Our Lord: “The Lord hath given me a learned tongue, that I should know how to uphold by word him that is weary: he wakeneth in the morning, in the morning he wakeneth my ear, that I may hear him as a master. The Lord God hath opened my ear, and I do not resist: I have not gone back. I have given my body to the strikers, and my cheeks to them that plucked them: I have not turned away my face from them that rebuked me, and spit upon me.  The Lord God is my helper, therefore am I not confounded: therefore have I set my face as a most hard rock, and I know that I shall not be confounded.”  In the same way, we also know that if we have all of our trust in God, if we follow His commandments on account of our love for Him, then we will not be shamed, even if the world should try to kill us.  The Book of the Wisdom of Solomon tells us: “The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them.  In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure was taken for misery: And their going away from us, for utter destruction: but they are in peace.  And tough in the sight of men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality.  Afflicted in few things, in many they shall be well rewarded: because God hat tried them, and found them worthy of himself.  As gold in the furnace, he hath proved them, and as a victim of a holocaust, he hath received them.”

How to have friendship with God? Imitation of Christ through the examples of the saints

     This is the story of each one of the saints, for each lived after the model of Christ, and therefore these individual Christian heroes are interpretations of the Life of Christ, since they all give to us a certain emphasis on different aspects of an infinite subject.  We read about the lives of the saints, in order to know how to imitate Christ.  In a similar way, we need to learn about the Christ from the circumstances of our everyday life, for the Author of the sanctification of the saints is also the Author of all things, and particularly of the circumstances, which occur around us.  In fact, it is especially from other people that we learn the interpretation of the Life of Our Lord, which leads us to perfection.

Perfection is the not complicated: Enthroning the icon of Christ in our hearts 

     When we return to God in repentance, we enthrone in our hearts the icon of Christ, the Divine Image, which is not made by hands, but was written by the Holy Spirit.  Naturally, we know that we all possess the image of God, since we are human beings, but that image is darkened by our sins and degraded. When we enthrone this image in our hearts through repentance, God places us on the path of perfection.  Each icon has two parts: paint and ground.  In each person, the Holy Spirit has written the beautiful image of God in pure and bright paints, but the ground contains many imperfections on account of our sinful nature.  Only through true knowledge and love of Christ can the likeness of Christ be made perfect in us.  After our conversion to God through repentance, our concept of Christ is yet very imperfect and incomplete.  Thus, Christ comes to us through His other images.  Some are beautiful, because they show forth Christ in glory, some are terrible, since they show Him in pain and humiliation, and some we prefer not to look upon at all, because they show us the Christ Who will come to judge the living and the dead. If we receive all these images (all people) with reverence, then we are learning how to cooperate with the Holy Spirit and perfect the Divine likeness in us. 

     Instead of seeking honour from this world, we should strive to receive others just as we would receive our Lord.  For this reason, St. Benedict taught his monks a special way to greet strangers.  Whenever a guest knocked on the door, the monk was to answer at once, “Thanks be to God.” In other words, “Thanks be to God that Christ has come.” In this same way, let us receive all with reverence, saying in our hearts with the Hebrew children: “Blessed in He Who comes in the Name of the Lord.”