A fresco depicting the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, in the crypt of the Monastery of Hosios Loukas in Boeotia, Greece. The frescos date back to the middle of the 11th century, about fifty years after the death of Elfric.
Part 1 of 2
‘Go into the
village over against you,
and straightway ye shall find an ass
tied,
and a colt with her: loose them,
and bring them unto me.’
See also The Sunday of Palms and Willows.
AN ass is a foolish beast, and dirty,* and stupid compared with other beasts, and strong for burdens. Such were men before Christ’s advent: foolish and dirty, while they served idols and various vices, and bowed down to the images they had fashioned themselves, and said to them, “Thou art my god.” And they bore whatever burden the devil laid on them.
But when Christ came to mankind, then he turned our foolishness to reason, and our dirtiness into clean living.
The tamed ass signified the Jewish people, who were tamed under the old law. The wild foal signified all other people, who were heathen and untamed: but they became tame and believing when Christ sent his disciples over the whole earth, saying “Go over all the earth, and teach all nations, and baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; and bid them hold all the precepts which I have taught you.”*
Elfric uses the word ‘unclæn’, but does not mean ‘unclean, taboo, untouchable’ as e.g. pigs are for Judaism: Christianity has no such notion, and anyway donkeys are not unclean in Judaism. The Old English word ‘unclæn’ can be used to mean quite simply ‘dirty’.
St Matthew is the only evangelist to speak of two animals, an ass and a foal; see Matthew 21:2. St Mark and St Luke mention ‘a colt, the foal of an ass’, but emphasise that the colt has never been ridden; seeMark 11:4. Elfric harmonises these accounts to obtain his tame ass and wild foal.
Part Two
A donkey and foal in the New Forest, Hampshire, lunching off gorse. Elfric joins the service books of the Eastern Churches in seeing the donkey as a symbol of the Gentiles, wild and foolish; likewise, he emphasises that the foolish Gentiles were not tamed by the force of state or religious laws, but by the civilising effect of Christian enlightenment.
‘And if any man say ought unto you,
ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them;
and straightway he will send them.’
THE master of the asses asked, why they untied his asses?
So would the chief men of every people obstinately respond to God’s preaching. But when they saw that the preachers healed, through God’s might, the lame and the blind, and gave speech to the dumb, and also raised the dead to life, then they could not withstand those miracles, but all equally yielded to God.*
Christ’s disciples said, “The Lord hath need of the asses, and sends for them.”
We are exhorted and invited to God’s kingdom, but we are not forced. When we are invited, then we are untied; and when we are left to our own free will, then it is as though we are sent for.
It is God’s mercy that we are untied; but if we live rightly, that will be both God’s grace and our own zeal.* We should constantly pray for the Lord’s help; seeing that our own free will cannot prosper unless helped on by the Almighty.
It took less than sixty years from the arrival of Gregory the Great’s missionaries in 597 to convert every one of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to Christianity. See The Baptism of Kent.
That is, once untied (Elfric refers this elsewhere to baptism) it is up to us to be led by the disciples willingly, or dig in our heels. Compare Revelation 3:20.
