Catholic Radio Dramas

Behold Your King

From a Discourse by Saint Andrew of Crete, Bishop (660-740)

Behold, Your King is Coming to You, the Holy One, the Savior

Let us say to Christ: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the king of Israel. Let us wave before him like palm branches the words inscribed above him on the cross. Let us show him honor, not with olive branches but with the splendor of merciful deeds to one another. Let us spread the thoughts and desires of our hearts under his feet like garments, so that entering with the whole of his being, he may draw the whole of our being into himself and place the whole of his in us. Let us say to Zion in the words of the prophet: Have courage, daughter of Zion, do not be afraid. Behold, your king comes to you, humble and mounted on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.

He is coming who is everywhere present and pervades all things; he is coming to achieve in you his work of universal salvation. He is coming who came to call to repentance not the righteous but sinners, coming to recall those who have strayed into sin. Do not be afraid then: God is in the midst of you, and you shall not be shaken.

 

Receive him with open, outstretched hands, for it was on his own hands that he sketched you. Receive him who laid your foundations on he palms of his hands. Receive him who laid your foundations on the palms of his hands. Receive him, for he took upon himself all that belongs to us except sin, to consume what is ours in what is his. Be glad, city of Zion, our mother, and fear not. Celebrate your feasts. Glorify him for his mercy, who has come to us in you. Rejoice exceedingly, daughter of Jerusalem, sing and leap for joy. Be enlightened, be enlightened, we cry to you, as holy Isaiah trumpeted, for the light has come to you and the glory of the Lord has risen over you.

What kind of light is this? It is that which enlightens every man coming into the world. It is the everlasting light, the timeless light revealed in time, the light manifested in the flesh although hidden by nature, the light that shone round the shepherds and guided the Magi. It is the light that was in the world from the beginning, through which the world was made, yet the world did not know it. It is that light which came to its own, and its own people did not receive it.

And what is this glory of the Lord? Clearly it is the cross on which Christ was glorified, he, the radiance of the Father’s glory, even as he said when he faced his passion: Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him, and will glorify him at once. The Glory of which he speaks here is his lifting up on the cross, for Christ’s glory is his cross and his exaltation upon it, as he plainly says: When I have been lifted up, I will draw all men to myself.

Source: The Liturgy of the Hours – Office of Readings

Saint Andrew of Crete (660-740) was born in Damascus, Syria in 660. At the age of 15, deciding to become a monk, he entered the Monastery of St. Sabas (pictured right) in Jerusalem. There he rose to distinction as as a prominent theologian and dynamic preacher with classic oratory skills. He wrote forty-one sermons and discourses along with many sacred hymns and inaugurated a form of sacred music known as the canon which is used in the Byzantine liturgy to this day. In 685, he was sent to Constantinople by Patriarch Theodore of Jerusalem to accept the decrees of the Council of Constantinople. He stayed on there as head of an orphanage and of a home to care for aging men. He was named Archbishop of Gortyna, Crete, and in 712 attended a synod called by Phillipicus Bardanes, a Monothelite, who had seized the imperial crown and denounced the decisions of the Council of Constantinople. When Anastasius II defeated Bardanes, Pope Constantine accepted the explanation of Andrew’s patriarch that he had attended under duress. Surnamed “of Jerusalem,” Andrew died in 740 at the age of 80.

Narrated by Frank Dugan