examination of the heart 196 do. Take heed, for it is better to be ready to die rather than to disobey. 2. O my immortal God! What kind of reign is Yours? What kind of victory? The Roman emperors, returning from wars and celebrating their triumph, used to ride into the city of Rome on elephants or crowned camels; and You, the Emperor of Heaven and of the whole world, You enter the royal city of David sitting upon a young donkey! What self-contempt! What humility! O my soul, what could happen to you hereafter that is so painful and burdensome that you would not take it upon yourself out of love for Jesus? What is there so shabby, worthy of disdain, and so contemptible that you would dare to reject, inasmuch as seeing today your Leader humiliated this way? What can restrain you in the future from contempt for the world? What reasoning can convince you about things you desire or choose that are splendid, beautiful, and remarkable? The newborn Christ lay between the ox and the donkey; He entered Jerusalemon a donkey.What for? To teach you that people who love inexpensive things and hold the lofty ones in contempt, and who deride and despise all ostentation, shall be granted an easy admission into the heavenly Kingdom. As for you, your every cross, however heavy, would become lighter if you prepare yourself through self-contempt to carry it; if you learn beforehand to forget about yourself, if you grow used to count yourself for little, and eagerly desire to be regarded as nobody. Jesus more easily bore the crown of thorns, the purple cloth of mockery, and all the ridicule and insults of Friday, because He entered the city on Sunday so humbly, riding on the back of a donkey. 3. “When [H]e entered Jerusalem, all the city was stirred” (Mt 21:10). Just as the eternal Word, Christ the Lord, stirred up Jerusalem by entering it, thus we may believe that the whole human soul (mystically called Jerusalem), [f.40v] is moved, changed, and transformed when visited by the same Lord with all His humanity and divinity. He transforms a soul once subservient to flesh
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