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He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

--Micah 6:8

Today all creation sings with joy, freed from the enemy's chains. The gates and locks of hell shudder, and the evil spirits tremble in fear. Hills and mountains flow with sweet gifts, fields and meadows yield up their fruit to God. Those above sing, while those below weep. Angels marvel, as they see on earth the One who is hidden even in heaven. He sits on a colt, yet He is still the One enthroned above the Cherubim, now encircled by the nations He has called. Even infants shout for joy before the One whom the seraphim glorify with fear. And now, on the road to Jerusalem, strides the One who measured the sky with a span and cupped the earth in His palm. The One no heaven can hold now steps into His church in plain sight.

Today the chief priest is furious at the Worker of great wonders, and the scribes and Pharisees look on with jealousy at the children running up with branches to welcome Christ, exclaiming: “Hosanna to the Son of David!”

It falls to us, then, as God's own people, to honour Christ who so loved us. Come, let us bow down and fall before Him. Like the sinful woman, let us kiss His most pure feet in our thoughts, and like her, turn away from our misdeeds. Let us pour out our faith and love upon His head like precious ointment. Let us go out with love to meet Him, as the crowds did, and like branches, let us break off our resentment. Let us spread good deeds before Him like cloaks.

Let us prepare our souls with humility, making them like an upper room, so that the Son of God may enter us and keep the Passover within us with His disciples. Let us stay close to Him who freely chose to suffer. Let us carry our own cross by enduring every insult with patience. Let us crucify ourselves by resisting sin. Let us put to death the desires of the flesh. Let us cry out: “Hosanna in the highest! Blessed are You who came to Your willing suffering, by which You trampled down hell and conquered death!” And ending our words here, let us crown the Holy Church with songs as if with flowers, let us adorn the festival, give glory to God, and magnify Christ our Saviour, overshadowed by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Then, having celebrated the feast with joy, we may attain in peace the three-day resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom belong all glory, honour, dominion, and worship, with the Father and the Most Holy, Good, and Life-Giving Spirit, always, now and ever, and unto ages of ages.

Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday

Visible triumphs are few in the earthly life of our Lord Jesus Christ. He preached a kingdom “not of this world.” At His nativity in the flesh there was “no room at the inn.” For nearly thirty years, while He grew “in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52), He lived in obscurity as “the son of Mary.” When He appeared from Nazareth to begin His public ministry, one of the first to hear of Him asked: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46). In the end He was crucified between two thieves and laid to rest in the tomb of another man.

Two brief days stand out as sharp exceptions to the above—days of clearly observable triumph. These days are known in the Church today as Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday. Together they form a unified liturgical cycle which serves as the passage from the forty days of Great Lent to Holy Week. They are the unique and paradoxical days before the Lord’s Passion. They are days of visible, earthly triumph, of resurrectional and messianic joy in which Christ Himself is a deliberate and active participant. At the same time they are days which point beyond themselves to an ultimate victory and final kingship which Christ will attain not by raising one dead man or entering a particular city, but by His own imminent suffering, death and resurrection.