On Lazarus and the Palm Branches

Why Men and Angels Hailed Him King§1

1Just as the boundless deep pours out the springs of water without stint, and the springs in turn let loose rivers that nothing can hold back, and the rivers visit the earth and drench it (Psalm 65:9) so that it bears bread for food and wine for the gladness of men (Psalm 104:14–15), and men, enjoying them, fulfill what is written, “The poor shall eat and be satisfied, and those who seek Him shall praise the Lord” (Psalm 22:26): so too the unspeakable love for mankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, out of the boundless deep of His goodness and love for mankind, makes His holy feasts spring up for us, the feasts in which He worked our salvation.

He Himself makes the feast spring up, and the grace of the Holy Spirit, which is at work in the feast, fills “the streams of the river”, by which I mean the God-bearing men who possess “teaching in teaching” (Romans 12:7). They in turn visit the earth of mankind, an earth of mind and reason, and gladden the holy Church, which is “the city of the great King” (Psalm 48:2), Jesus Christ, as it is written: “The streams of the river make glad the city of God” (Psalm 46:4). And the Church, gladdened and delighted out of the richness of her heart, praises and glorifies the Lord who reigns in her.

Come, then, today too let us speak of what He Himself proclaimed beforehand about Himself through His holy prophets. Let us search out, as far as we are able, the salvation that our King accomplished for us in this feast. Come, let us consider why not only men but the angelic powers too hymned Him as King.

The cause of the hymn, then, as it appears outwardly, was the raising of Lazarus, as the Gospel says: “But they took counsel to put Lazarus to death as well, because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus” (John 12:10–11). This is the outward cause of the believers’ praise; but its hidden and secret cause is the raising of the whole of human nature.

And just as the sign of Lazarus and that raising made men sing hymns to Jesus, so the sign of the raising of the whole of human nature led the holy angels to give glory; and as much greater as the raising of all is than the raising of Lazarus, so much greater was the glory then. The minds of those who shouted, astonished at the miracle, moved them to give glory; but the divine plan, on account of the raising of the whole of human nature, secretly moved not only men but also the holy angels to marvel at Jesus and glorify Him.

For the angelic powers saw, truly they saw, and learned, and were made wise with a wisdom they had not known: the wisdom made manifest from God, who created all things, through the Church of the faithful, the wisdom hidden in Him before the ages (Ephesians 3:9; 1 Corinthians 2:7). I mean the wisdom of the teachings, the promises, and the miracles of the Lord Jesus, as the inspired Paul says somewhere: “so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and the authorities through the Church” (Ephesians 3:10).

For the powers above are learning what they had never yet seen or heard. They are creatures, and there is no creature that has no need to learn; nor do they know what is going to happen, unless they are initiated into it by the holy, revered, and worshipful Trinity.

So they learned, and were made certain of, the resurrection of Adam when they saw the Lord raise the widow’s son (Luke 7:12–15); for the earth became like a widow when her son, the first-formed man, died. And when they saw Him raise the daughter of the synagogue ruler (Luke 8:49–55), they were made wise to know that He will raise Eve too, together with Adam. Again, when He raised up the servant of the foreign centurion (Matthew 8:5–13), they were also taught…

Lazarus Raised and the Call to Rejoice§2

2…this: that He will raise even the foreign nations. Here, then, are three different kinds of the dead. But when He raised Lazarus from the tomb, four days dead, a man made up of the four elements, who already stank (John 11:39), who had decayed, who had been mastered by worms, it was made known to the rulers and authorities in heaven and to those on earth (Ephesians 3:10) that He will raise all humanity, made up of the four elements, even if it has stunk in the sin of the transgression, even if it has rotted in the impiety of idolatry, even if, as by worms, it has been mastered by demons and taken captive to do their will (2 Timothy 2:26).

When they saw this, the angels in secret and human beings openly were astonished and amazed, and they began to cry out and say: “Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” (Matthew 21:9). They praised Him not only as a worker of signs, but also as the King who took captive the whole captivity that the devil and death had held captive since time began (Psalm 68:18; Ephesians 4:8). For these reasons and others like them, the divine prophets proclaim Him King.

Now the prophets we have named are hosts who feed rational souls. As the months of the year, each in its turn, feed human bodies, so they too, each in turn, or rather all together, feed the souls of the faithful at each feast and at all times, and they make Christians drunk with divine teachings, as one of them says somewhere: “They will be drunk with the richness of Your house” (Psalm 36:8).

Come, then, all who love the kingdom of the Lord, let us listen, and they will tell us what the great Zechariah, glorious among the prophets, prophesies to us about it. Let us understand the good news the herald announces as he runs ahead of the kingdom long before its time. Come, as rational guests, let us enjoy the words that come from the mouth of God through Zechariah, our spiritual host; for it has fallen to him to feed us at this feast, as the Lord says: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).

Since sorrow is hateful to people and joy is longed for, he begins his cry with joy, saying: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion” (Zechariah 9:9). “Rejoice greatly,” the prophet cries to those in captivity. “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!” (Romans 11:33). Why “Rejoice”? And why “greatly,” and “be glad and delight” (Zechariah 2:10)? Because He who brings you back has come, as the father of the King who brings you back foretold, saying: “When the Lord brought back the captivity of Zion, we became like those who are comforted; then our mouth was filled with joy, and our tongue with gladness” (Psalm 126:1–2).

“Rejoice,” he says, because you are returning from captivity to the demons and from exile in this age to the Jerusalem above (Galatians 4:26), which your father Abraham awaited (Hebrews 11:10), as the blessed apostle Paul says somewhere: “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the festal gathering and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect” (Hebrews 12:22–23). That is the place from which “pain, sorrow, and sighing have fled away” (Isaiah 35:10), where all the righteous dwell and rejoice. Then it is “be glad and delight” (Zechariah 2:10) and “rejoice greatly, O daughter,” plainly the daughter of this Zion.

“And why,” she asks, “should I rejoice greatly, O prophet?” “Rejoice,” because that dreadful one will no longer take you captive; and “greatly,” because the One who rescues you is not like the other kings: He is an eternal King, and His kingdom is eternal, as the angel Gabriel says to His mother, the Virgin Mary: “And of His kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:33). And as His kingdom is eternal, so your salvation is eternal. That is why he says: “Rejoice greatly; proclaim, O daughter of Jerusalem” (Zechariah 9:9).

“What shall I proclaim, O prophet?” Proclaim thanksgiving, praise, and hymns to your King, who came down from the heights of heaven to save you. Proclaim: “Hosanna in the highest, from where You came to save me; blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord” (Matthew 21:9).

And look with me at the evangelist, how he proclaims Christ as twofold. When he says, “Hosanna in the highest,” he shows the exalted nature of the Godhead; and when he says, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord,” he signifies the substance of His humanity, the blessed seed with which blessed Abraham was blessed, that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed (Genesis 22:18). For he says: “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father…” (Mark 11:10)

Daughter of Zion and the Colt Set Free§3

3…David” (Mark 11:10).

Let us take up the earlier saying again and press it like a prophetic breast, for it still has good things to give, milk and contemplation. For he says: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; proclaim, O daughter of Jerusalem” (Zechariah 9:9). And why “daughter of Zion” and not “Zion,” and “daughter of Jerusalem” and not “Jerusalem”? Listen with understanding, I beg you.

Just as plants, birds, four-footed beasts, and human beings have their names according to the difference of their form and power, so each stroke of the divine oracles has its own power and its own spiritual sense. So let us search out why the prophet calls the Jerusalem that now believes first “daughter of Zion” and then “daughter of Jerusalem.” For he says: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; proclaim, O daughter of Jerusalem” (Zechariah 9:9).

“Zion” means “thirsting.” She is the assembly of the righteous and the prophets who, from the beginning until the coming of Christ, thirsted to be united to the divine and worshipful substance of the Godhead and to be pleasing to it, as Peter, the chief of the apostles, says: “that they may become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). These, as they sought the Lord and thirsted for Him, were called Zion, as one of them said: “My soul has thirsted for God, the mighty, the living One” (Psalm 42:2).

But when they attained and drew near, or rather, appeared before Him and beheld His face (for so another version reads), they became Jerusalem, “seeing God and a watchtower of all knowledge.” He calls the faithful in the Lord the daughter of this Zion: those who thirst through faith and, by doing the commandments of the Gospel, seek to find the Lord who is hidden in them, as the Holy Spirit says: “This is the generation of those who seek the Lord, who seek the face of the God of Jacob” (Psalm 24:6). And when they attain Him, they are called the daughter of the Jerusalem we have named, for they behold God and look out over spiritual knowledge.

The prophet, begging God through the Spirit to show forth such a Zion and Jerusalem, says: “Remember Your congregation, which You acquired from the beginning” (Psalm 74:2). So, together with Zion, this mother of yours: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; proclaim, O daughter of Jerusalem” (Zechariah 9:9), and cry out in heavenly fashion with your mother: “Hosanna in the highest, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord” (Matthew 21:9).

And what does the Gospel say? “When they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage” (Matthew 21:1). For He was coming to the upper room so that the faithful might eat Him, “to the Mount of Olives” (Matthew 21:1), which is the faithful church from the people. “Then Jesus sent two of His disciples” (Matthew 21:1), who are the two choirs of the prophets and the apostles. For when the apostles made disciples of the nations (Matthew 28:19), they had with them the God-inspired oracles of the prophets, which bear witness to Christ, just as Ezekiel, great among the prophets, saw them: “a wheel,” he says, “within a wheel” (Ezekiel 1:16), flying and running.

Jesus says to them: “Go into the village opposite you” (Matthew 21:2); for He sent them into the whole inhabited world of the nations, because until then the nations stood opposed to the faithful church from the people. He sent them at the fitting time “into the village opposite,” the village of the nations, for it was ready to receive the two choirs of apostles and prophets already named.

They were sent “to bring the colt to Him” (Luke 19:35), and the colt is the nations, so that He might mount them and reign over them, as the psalmist says: “God has become King over the nations; the Lord sits on His holy throne” (Psalm 47:8). “On which no one has ever sat” (Mark 11:2; Luke 19:30): for the nations had neither God mounting and ruling over them, nor law, nor prophets. “Untie it,” He says, “and bring it to Me” (Matthew 21:2; Luke 19:30). For the apostles untied the nations from darkness, that is, from ignorance of God; from error, from sin, from slavery to an alien master, from “the power of darkness” (Colossians 1:13), from “the ruler of this age” (John 12:31). And they brought them to the Lord, their Creator and Maker.

And see, He sits on them and reigns as upon the cherubim (Psalm 99:1), while they cry out and say: “Hosanna in the highest, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord; peace in heaven and glory in the highest” (Matthew 21:9; Luke 19:38), for so Luke puts it. Why does he say, “Peace in heaven”? Did the angels not have peace in heaven? Yes, they certainly had peace among themselves, “the peace that surpasses all understanding” (Philippians 4:7), as the most wise Paul says. They had peace in heaven, but they did not have it with human beings; heaven, then, kept its peace to itself. But when the…

Garments, Palms, and the Humble King§4

4…angels saw all humanity being raised through the sign of Lazarus, and the nations being untied like the colt and coming to be ruled by their Creator, then heaven too was at peace with human beings, and with one accord they cried out and said: “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord; peace in heaven and glory in the highest” (Luke 19:38).

“And they put the garments on the colt” (Matthew 21:7): these signify the grace He gave them among the nations, and through this grace “they set Jesus on them” (Luke 19:35). And not only through grace, but also through their own virtues, as the evangelist signifies when he says: “And others spread their garments on the road” (Luke 19:36). By this he hints at their own virtues, which they yoked to grace, as the inspired Paul says plainly: “Therefore, having been justified by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:1–2).

That much concerns grace. “And not only this, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance proven character, and proven character hope; and hope does not put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3–5).

And “they spread them on the ground” means that their virtues were seen bodily, openly, and by the senses before the nations, as the apostle also says elsewhere on this point: “What you have seen in me, and heard, and received, these things do” (Philippians 4:9). But let us return to our subject.

“The crowds that went before Him and those that followed cried out” (Matthew 21:9) with praises and with olive branches, which signify the practical work of the outer man, and with palm fronds, which point to the spiritual, contemplative, and pure work of the inner man. “They cried out, saying: Hosanna in the highest” (Matthew 21:9). For in truth all the crowds of the righteous, the prophets, and the priests, who are those who go before and those who follow, cry out in faith and say: “Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest” (Matthew 21:9).

As the evangelist says: “All this took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet, saying: Say to the daughter of Zion” (Matthew 21:4–5). To whom do you say “Say,” O prophet? Look, you proclaim it yourself; you say it yourself. “I,” he says, “longed to see and to hear, and not I alone, but many prophets and righteous men as well” (Matthew 13:17). But I speak also to those who are present and are made disciples, who see and hear the King of Zion, so that they may say and proclaim: “Say to the daughter of Zion: Behold, your King is coming to you” (Matthew 21:5).

And he did not say simply “is coming,” but “is coming to you,” that is, to become yours and to dwell in you. “Behold, your King is coming to you, righteous and saving” (Zechariah 9:9), saving from slavery to the enemy those who believe in Him.

“Gentle, and mounted on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden” (Matthew 21:5), that is, humble-minded, and in His humility “destroying the chariots of the kingdom of Ephraim” (Zechariah 9:10), that is, the kingdom of the devil, who reigned over Israel and over the nations. According to the letter, too, He destroyed the kingdom of the Jewish people; for the anointing and the kingdom of the Jews lasted until Christ, and then ceased. “And the horse,” he says, “from Jerusalem” (Zechariah 9:10), that is, all the pride of their rule, by means of His humble colt.

The patriarch Jacob, blessing Judah and revealing the blessing given to his fathers Abraham and Isaac, which is Christ, says: “Binding his colt to the vine” (Genesis 49:11). For to the vine that was moved out of Egypt and filled the whole land (Psalm 80:8–9) with the teaching of its prophets and righteous men, he bound the unclean nations; for the colt is unclean under the Law, and so are the nations.

“Binding his colt to the vine” (Genesis 49:11). Why? So that they might receive from it the Law and the Prophets and the knowledge of God in them, that is, Christ, who is the blessing and the cleansing of the nations. For he says: “and the foal of his donkey to the tendril” (Genesis 49:11). The tendril, that is, the shoot from the vine, is Christ, who sprang from the vine of the synagogue that came out of Egypt, as Jacob himself says to him: “From a shoot…” (Genesis 49:9)

Call to Bind Ourselves to Christ§5

5…my son, you went up” (Genesis 49:9). And the nations were bound fast in Him, never to be loosed. So let us too be bound to Christ, never to be loosed. If we strive at all to be saved and to profit from His feasts, He in turn will raise us together with Lazarus from our dead works (Hebrews 9:14), the works done without Him.

So let us dine with Him in Bethany (John 12:2), which means “house of obedience”; so let us fittingly gather our thoughts, together with the senses of the body, out of the captivity of forgetfulness, crying out and saying: “Hosanna in the highest; blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord” (Matthew 21:9), who comes to enter His own Jerusalem, not to suffer as He did then, but to save her and to be glorified by her, as David calls out to her, saying: “Extol the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise your God, O Zion” (Psalm 147:12).

He said it twice, “extol” and “praise,” with soul and body, “for He has strengthened the bars of your gates” (Psalm 147:13), which are faith, hope, love…

The Infants' Praise and Christ's Mount§6

6…meditation, patience, and endurance. “He has blessed your children within you” (Psalm 147:13). These are the faithful infants who received the Lord with the branches, that is, with new fruits, who nurse on the milk of Christ’s teaching. For as soon as they believe in Him, they praise, they sing hymns, they give glory, as it is written: “Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies You have prepared praise” (Psalm 8:2; Matthew 21:16).

Let us become a holy mount for Him in place of the unclean colt, so that He may ride upon us. Let us yoke the chariot of our thoughts to Him, “and He will reign” over us “forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:33).

Let us take up a cheerful way of life like olive branches, “to make our face cheerful with oil” (Psalm 104:15), as the psalmist says, and again: “Serve the Lord with gladness” (Psalm 100:2). Again, let us carry in the inner man the divine and spiritual…

Palm Branches of Faith, Hope, and Love§7

7…work, like the branches of the palm trees (John 12:13), and let us follow Him, giving thanks to Him. Instead of their whiteness, let us carry right, undefiled, and simple faith; instead of their sharpness, patient hope, which pierces and slays every thought that rises up to take us captive away from the knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:5); and instead of the sweetness of the palm, sweet love, which is made up of the faith and hope already named and the rest, so that what was said may be fulfilled in us: “The righteous will flourish like a palm tree; he will grow like a cedar in Lebanon” (Psalm 92:12).

Let us follow Him into the holy city; let us enter the temple with Him, so that He may overturn the tables of the money changers within us and drive away from us the demons who sell the doves (Matthew 21:12), the thoughts that fly about in error, together with…

A Holy Temple for Christ§8

8…all who sell and buy among us, and that, instead of a den of robbers (Matthew 21:13), He may make us a holy temple, like the temple of old, in which Christ dwells and walks (2 Corinthians 6:16); so that He may grant light to the blind in us, make the deaf hear and the lame walk (Matthew 11:5), and raise the dead with Lazarus—for where life dwells, there is resurrection—so that with Lazarus and the crowds and His disciples, with infants and nursing babies, and with the holy angels, we may cry aloud, shouting: “Hosanna in the highest; blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord” (Psalm 118:26; Matthew 21:9), Christ, Lord and God, “the King of the ages” (1 Timothy 1:17). To Him be glory, honor, and worship, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and always and to the ages of ages. Amen.