Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!  Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!  Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey

What king is there who rides on a donkey?  It is unheard of.  What sort of debasement this seems, how inappropriate; the king and creator of heaven and earth, riding gloriously on a donkey.  In humility and littleness beyond comprehension Christ entered Jerusalem in this way.  For the wise and the learned it was too much to bear to think that this could be the Messiah.  They therefore rejected him, despite all the signs.

In complete poverty, the eternal Logos, though whom and for whom all creation came into Being, was born in utter poverty in a cave.  God does not change.  In the same humility and meekness he rides into the new heavenly Jerusalem of our souls.  “Abide in me as I abide in you.”  In silence and obscurity the Word rejoices to take up residence in our hearts, and only the recollected soul can hear him.  It is still scandalous today to believe that our God comes to us in the same way he entered Jerusalem.  It is difficult to believe in a God who serves his creatures, yet calls them to serve each other.

“Father, I thank you, for what you have hidden from the learned and wise you have revealed to the merest children.”    Hidden, not out of contempt for learning or wisdom, for He is Wisdom itself, but “so that there may be no boasting before God.”  It is not wisdom and learning which reveals the deeper mysteries, but humility and meekness.  “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they will see God.” (Matthew 5.8)