Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion
(Year A, Mar 29. 2026)
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord;
Hosanna in the highest.”
“There are four kinds of people, then, in the Lord’s procession: there are the wise and good, who go ahead, and there are the simple and good, who follow. (I add “good” because the wise who are not good are wicked, according to the saying, They are wise in doing evil, and the simple who are not good are foolish. In the Lord’s procession neither the wicked nor the foolish has a place.) Then there are those who cling to him: they are the contemplatives. Those who carry him and are burdened by him, these are the hardhearted and are not devoted in the least.
But look, they are all in the Lord’s procession – but none of them sees his face! Those who go ahead are busy preparing the way; they are anxious about the sins and temptations of others. Those who follow cannot see his face at all, but, as was said of Moses, they see his back parts. The beast on which he sits never lifts its eyes to see but is always facing the ground.
Those who cling to him can sometimes see, but fleetingly and not continuously, nor can they see him fully while they are on the path. Nevertheless, compared to the rest, they come closest to seeing him face-to-face, in accord with what Scripture said of Moses, that [God] spoke to the rest of the prophets in visions and dreams, but to Moses he spoke face-to-face. As to the full sight, not even Moses could obtain the vision of his face in this life, because, as he himself said, no one shall see me and live. I shall not be seen, he said, in this life; no one shall see my face on this path and in this procession.
May he in his great loving-kindness grant us so to persevere in his procession while we are alive that in that great procession, in which he is to be received by the Father with all those who belong to him, and will hand over the kingdom to God his Father, we may be worthy to enter the holy city with him who lives and reigns world without end.”
– St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Palm Sunday Sermon II –
