A let us light our lamps brightly and clearly; let us change the garments of our souls as is fitting for God, let us prepare the paths of life well, let us open the entrances of our souls to the King, let us carry the palms of victory as we do for the victor over death, let us shake the olive branches as befits the branch born of Mary; let us sing to God the angelic praises of the angels: together with the children let us raise our voices as divine dignity demands, and together with the people let us cry out what befits a people: Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. God is the Lord, and he has appeared to us, he has appeared to us who were sitting in darkness and the shadow of death. B The resurrection of the fallen has appeared, the liberation of captives has appeared, the recovery of sight for the blind has appeared, the consolation of those who mourn has appeared, the rest of those who labor has appeared, the refreshment of those who thirst has appeared, the vindication of those who are oppressed has appeared, the redemption of the desperate has appeared, the consolation of the desperate has appeared, the union of those who are divided has appeared, the defense of those who are vexed has appeared, the medicine of the sick has appeared, the tranquility of those who are tossed by storms has appeared, and the healing of those who are suffering has appeared.
Wherefore let us too, the peoples, cry out with the people, saying to Christ today: Hosanna, which means, Save now, O God in the highest. O new and paradoxical things and wonders! Yesterday Christ raised Lazarus from the dead, and today the same One hastens to death. Yesterday, as Life, He granted life to another; today the Giver of life goes to death. Yesterday He released Lazarus from his grave-clothes; today the same One willingly offers Himself to be bound in wrappings. Yesterday He led a man out of darkness; today, for the sake of man, He goes forth to enter into the dark places and the shadow of death. Yesterday, six days before the Passover, through the restoration of the five senses, He who is for three days granted back to the two sisters the brother who had been dead four days, and today He goes to the cross. C But to Mary He gave back a brother dead for four days; yet to the Church Christ offers Himself after three days. There, only Bethany marvels; here, however, the whole Church celebrates the festival. It celebrates the feast of feasts, having in its midst the King of incorporeal spirits as both Bridegroom and King; it celebrates feasts, as an olive tree full of fruit in the house of God, shading with foliage that never falls; it celebrates feasts, as the spring lily of paradise; for in it is Christ, the truly blooming lily, who does not D
A harm, but saves the world. In it Christ is the lily, the lily that brings no grief, but is the healer of those suffering from infirmities; in it is the vineyard, He who says: *I am the true vine*; in it is the olive grove, He who truly has mercy on those who hope in Him; in it is the branch that blossomed from the root of Jesse before the ages, without cultivation or digging of human seed; in it is the perennial fount; in it are found no Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, or Euphrates, but Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who irrigate the paradise of Christ’s Church. There all the youth today, like a fruit-bearing olive tree holding olives, entreat Christ, the merciful and compassionate; planted in the house of the Lord, flourishing in His courts like the spring, we celebrate this feast, seeing the legal winter having passed away.
B Keep the feast, Church of Christ, not in figure, not dancing according to the sense of the body, but celebrating feast days in spirit and mind, seeing the overthrow of idols and holding the resurrection of the churches. For with/Paul I cry out to you with a holy and great voice: *The old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new*; indeed, and they are marvelous. Therefore, rejoice in the Lord, O flock of Christ, rejoice; rejoice, Church of Christ; be glad and exult, daughter of God. For all glory is yours, as a daughter of Christ the King, within and without; no longer widowed, but flowering as the bride of a God-man; no longer standing at the left of God because of the worship of idols, but standing at the right, and adorned because of the knowledge of God; no longer leavened with servile blood, but marked with divine blood; C no longer venerating Ohel, but worshiping Emmanuel; no longer honoring Troas, but glorifying the Trinity; no longer honoring Plato, but our omnipotent God; no longer Hercules the averter of evils, but the Comforter and Creator of all. You no longer worship Aristotle the sophist, but God who saved you at the end of the ages. Saturn has fallen, because God the Word is incarnate; not, however, from human intercourse, but revealed from Mary in a God-man manner. See the grace of this day; see the splendor of this feast. Therefore, rejoice and be glad, daughter of Zion, rejoice and exult, whole Church of God: *Lift up your eyes round about, and see* your children gathered, who were once scattered from among the nations. See the celebration of the feast; see the harmony of the people, see every tongue in one praise, see every mouth as one mouth, see the nations that were once wild
A and unknown and barren. Blessed is he who comes; but indeed he who comes in the name of the Lord is God, the Lord, and he has appeared to us. He who comes, he who is nowhere contained; he who comes, he who is nowhere mastered. Blessed is he who comes, and yet is not separated from the heavens. Blessed is he who comes in his own nature, and again comes in a divine manner: blessed is he who comes to me, symbolically seated upon a foal, as if upon a cherubic foal. For listen to what the holy herald, the evangelist of the feast, says:
*It came to pass, when he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount called Olivet, he sent two of his disciples, saying, Go into the village opposite you, and on entering it you will find an ass and a foal tied; untie them and bring them to me. And the disciples did as Jesus had commanded them; and they spread their garments upon the foal, and Jesus sat upon it.* And it came to pass that as he approached the descent of the mount, the crowd that had come to the feast took branches of palm trees, and went out to meet Jesus. And those going before, and those following, were crying out: *Hosanna to the son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.* B This is the Lord’s advent of the present feast; this is the coming of the King of kings to Sion, both of old and now; this is the bright and public arrival of the Creator of all things on this present day. Therefore, brothers, since the crowd has come now to the feast, let us go out to meet him: both the visible and the invisible world, and the prophets who preceded in time, and the teachers, and those who follow with the foal, they who agree with God in faith. Today let the heavenly things together with the earthly and the nether regions sing hymns: let every mouth and spirit be opened to the praise of God. C You Cherubim, cry out: *Holy, holy, holy Lord,* the thrice-holy, God of Sabaoth; *the heaven and the earth are full of his glory.* You Seraphim, sing hymns. You prophets, preach. And let one say: *Let the heavens rejoice and the earth exult.* And another: *Rejoice greatly, daughter of Sion; proclaim, daughter of Jerusalem.* And let another, gazing upon Christ the King, cry out: *Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.* And let another preach concerning the Lord himself: *This is our God, and no other shall be reckoned in comparison with him.* And let another, gazing upon D him, say: Behold man at once and God. His name is the Rising; and David, looking to
the Christ who was born of him according to the flesh, says: A *God is the Lord, and he has appeared to us.* And again, let another, bending the knee, cry out to Christ: *Let all the earth worship you.* And let another exhort the peoples, saying: *Keep a solemn feast with thick boughs, even to the horns of the altar.*
For thus, too, was the Lord’s journey with the foal completed of old: with the grand consensus of the whole people—namely, the choirs of the fathers, the multitudes of the righteous, the spirits of the prophets, the children of the Hebrews, the infants at the breast, and the throngs of angels. Some were spreading out their wings, others were carrying palms, others were following, others were cutting down branches, others were braiding olive shoots, others were untying the foal, others were spreading their garments, B others were opening gates, others were clearing the roads, others were readying the foal, others were proclaiming victory, others were waving branches, others were saying to the children: *Praise the Lord, you children*; and the children answered: *Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.* O work and day of festal wonder, incredible to the estimation of men! Children proclaim Christ as God, and the priests curse him; sucklings worship, and the teachers impiously slander and disparage; the children say "Hosanna," and the Hebrews cry out, "Let him be crucified"; the former gather to Christ bearing palms, the latter come against him with swords; the former cut branches, the latter prepare the wood of the cross; the infants spread their tunics for Christ, and the priests divide Christ’s garments; C the infants exalt Christ upon a foal, and the elders hang Christ upon a cross; the children worshipped Christ’s feet, but those men pierced Christ’s feet with nails; children offer praise, those men offer vinegar; children offer honor to Christ, those men offer gall; children wave palm branches, those men pierce Christ’s side with a lance; children celebrate Christ upon the foal with divine praise, those men sell him who is being carried upon the foal.
The ox knew him who possessed it, born in the manger, and the new people of the nations submitted themselves to their Lord, but Israel alone did not know Christ, their God. The tribes that were once of the nations have entered into friendship with God, and those who used to abhor the law are now obedient to the law; but those who held the laws do not doubt in violating them. So be it—you did not reverence the prophets, you killed the priests, you perverted the Scriptures, you broke the law, you sawed the righteous asunder, you rejected Moses, D you slaughtered your children, you defiled the temple, you did not obey God, you did not believe in Christ, you insultingly disparaged his divine miracles, you were incredulous concerning Lazarus, you had no faith in the blind men who received their sight; but what then do you say concerning these children? What do you ordain concerning the hymn of the sucklings? Who, tell me, enlightened them? Who taught
them? Who brought to pass? Who gave speech suddenly to those who ignore speech, if not the Christ, the pre-eternal Word? Now the young, children together with infants, with one hand hold the breast, and with their voice sing an angelic hymn; with one hand they hold the breast, and with the other they wave palm branches before Christ. A nature ignorant of speech has suddenly learned to speak words concerning God; suddenly, they have learned to offer A the prophetic utterance as gifts to God, the hymn of the bodiless spirits, while crying out: Hosanna in the highest, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord; God is the Lord, and he has shone upon us.
To which voices I, in exchange, to perform a duty of gratitude and festival, boldly ask these holy children: What are you saying, O children of God, you children who sing hymns? Whence comes to you this equal-to-the-heavens fervor, as you cry out the cherubic hymn? And how, seeing Christ upon a foal in a human manner, do you shout "Hosanna in the highest" in a manner befitting God? "Truly," the divine orator-children say to us, "even if Christ sits upon a visible foal, yet he is nowhere separated from the paternal bosom; B he is carried on the foal of an ass, yet he is not absent from the throne of the Cherubim; but just as he himself is present below without fail in the flesh for mortals, so he is also there above with the Father, God who cannot lie, and is truthful; the same is the Almighty, and Ruler of the world, and Ruler of the nations, and true God, and Provider, and Sower, and Guide, and Savior of all. He enters into the lower Jerusalem, and is not separated from the upper; this is the Creator of the ages, who is from the ages, and unto the ages; he is the one who alone stretched out the heaven; this is he who walks upon the sea as upon solid ground; this is he who wrapped the sea in mist; this is he who set boundaries for men; C this is he who divided limits for the seas; this is he who, having spread out the earth, hung it upon nothing; this is he who most wisely tempered the mixtures of the elements; this is he who adorned the beauty of the plants; this is he who stretched out the heaven like a curtain; this is he who adorned it with bright luminaries. The Cherubim shudder at him, and the Seraphim tremble; the sun sings hymns to him, the moon glorifies him, the stars praise him, the springs serve him, the abysses shudder at him, the depths fear him, the sea monsters yield to him, the dragons tremble at him, the rains serve him, the spirits show him reverence; this is he who established natures, this is he who set up creatures, this is he who ordered ranks, D this is the Creator of the upper and lower creatures, God our Lord; and to him be the glory and the power unto the ages of ages. Amen.