Vigils Reading – Palm Sunday

THE WAY OF CHRIST

IS STRAIGHT

From a commentary by St Cyril of Alexandria

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“Behold a righteous king will reign, and princes will rule with justice.”

The only-begotten Word of God, together with God the Father, has always been

king of the universe, and to him all creatures, visible and invisible, are subject.

People on earth, having been caught in the snares of sin, were persuaded by the

devil to reject his sovereignty and despise his royal power, but the judge and

dispenser of all justice brought them back under his own dominion.

All his ways are straight, says Scripture, and by the ways of Christ we

mean the divine precepts laid down by the gospel. By observing them we make

progress in every virtue, do honor to ourselves by the moral beauty of our lives,

and attain the heavenly reward to which we have been called. These are straight,

not winding ways; they are direct and easily followed. As it is written: “The way

of the upright is straight; the road of the just is made smooth.” Its many decrees

make the law a rugged way and its difficulty intolerable, but the way of the

gospel commands is smooth, without any roughness or steep ascents.

The ways of Christ are straight, then, and as for the holy city. Which is the

Church, he himself was its builder and he makes it his own dwelling. In other

words, he makes the saints his dwelling, sharing as we do in the Holy Spirit, we

have Christ within us and have become temples of the living God. Christ is both

the founder of the Church and its foundation, and upon this foundation we, like

precious stones, are built into a holy temple to become, through the Spirit, a

dwelling place for God…

When he founded the Church, Christ delivered his people from bondage.

He saved us from the power of Satan and of sin, freed us and subjected us to his

own rule, but not by paying a ransom or by bribes. As one of the disciples wrote:

“we have been freed from the futile ways handed down to us by our ancestors,

not by anything perishable like silver and gold, but by the precious blood of

Christ, like that of a lamb without mark or blemish.” He gave his own blood for

us, so that we no longer belong to ourselves, but to him who bought us and saved

us. Those therefore who turn aside from the noble rule of the true faith are justly

accused by all the saints of denying the Lord who redeemed them.