Palm Sunday

"Dearly beloved, the Solemnity of the Lord's Passion is come ; that day which we have so desired, and which same is so precious to the whole world.  Shouts of spiritual triumph are ringing, and suffer not that we should be silent.  Even though it be hard to preach often on the same solemnity, and do so meetly and well, a priest is not free to shirk the duty of preaching to the faithful concerning this so great mystery of divine mercy.  Nay, that his subject-matter is unspeakable should in itself make him eloquent, since where enough can never be said, there must needs ever be something to say.  Let human weakness, then, fall down before the glory of God, and acknowledge itself unequal to the duty of expounding the works of his mercy.  Let us toil in thought, let us fail in insight, let us falter in speech; it is good for us to feel how inadequate is the little we are able to express concerning the majesty of God.


For when the Prophet saith : Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his face evermore: let no man thence conclude that he will ever find all that he seeketh.  For if he cease his seeking, he will likewise cease to draw near.  But among all the works of God which weary the stedfast gaze of man's wonder, what is there that doth at once so ravish and so exceed the power of our contemplation as the Passion of the Saviour?  He it was who, to loose mankind from the bonds of the death-dealing Fall, spared to bring against the rage of the devil the power of the divine Majesty, and met him with the weakness of our lowly nature.  For if our cruel and haughty enemy could have known the counsel of God's mercy, it had been his task rather to have softened the hearts of the Jews into meekness, than to have inflamed them with unrighteous hatred.  Thus he might not have lost the thraldom of all his slaves, by attacking the liberty of the One that owed him nothing.


But he was undone by his own malice.  For he brought upon the Son of God that death which is become life to all the sons of man.  He shed that innocent blood which was to become at once the price of our redemption and the cup of our salvation.  Wherefore the Lord hath received that which according to the purpose of his own good pleasure he hath chosen.  He submitted himself to the ungodly hands of cruel men which, busy with their own sin, nonetheless ministered to the Redeemer's work.  And such was his loving-kindness, even for his murderers, that his prayer to his Father from the Cross asked not vengeance for himself but forgiveness for them."

-- From a sermon by St Leo the Great

** Painting by Giotto