“And if you are told something, you will answer, ‘The Lord needs it.'”
Mt 21:3
From a sermon by St. Francis de Sales. Works IX, 34
Our Saviour, therefore, wishing to have ridden on a donkey to enter Jerusalem, said to two of his Apostles: Go to the village that is near, enter such a house, untie the donkey and the donkey, and bring them to me; and if you are told anything, say that the Lord needs it. These two disciples leave all incontinent. You see, they are good religious, especially since they obey everything promptly, without reply. The religious of this time would have been more discreet, because they would have at least answered: O Master, if we do this, what will we say? It will be found bad, it will damage your reputation. But these good people do not say a word, but simply go; and they also met good and simple people, for having untied the donkey, those to whom it was asked only: What do you want to do? And the Apostles answered: The Lord needs it, they did not reply a word. O that this should shame so many people who are so curious that they want to know the reason for everything God does! Let it be enough for you that the Lord needs it.
Untie the donkey and the donkey; and this is what I consider secondly. What is untying the donkey and the donkey? It is to loosen the soul and the love that is his donkey. What is untying, the soul? It is to untie it and detach it from sin by means of a good confession; For everyone knows that the soul that is in a state of sin is tied and engaged in the bonds and nets of the devil. No one can understand the happiness of a soul who is untied and led to Our Lord by means of grace; but, O God, how greater is the happiness of the one from whom love is unbounded! And why untie soul and love? Because the Lord needs it: the soul to save it, and love to be reserved for it. God desires this love so much that He wants to have it all, and emotional love and effective love. It is emotional love that causes us so many great desires to work for the glory of God and to make us perfect; But he wants above all effective love, for he will hardly serve us to be very fond of his saint, a will if we do not like it to be fulfilled in us in affliction as in prosperity. And let no one ask why God wants all love, for it cannot be said, except because he needs it to do things so excellent and great in the soul that gives it all, that no human spirit can know or understand them.