The above icon appears as entry 16 in Icons: the Natasha Allen Collection: Catalogue by David and Tamara Talbot Rice. Dublin, 1968. The authors point out that the elongated proportions of the figures point to the influence of Dionysius, the greatest icon painter working in Moscow in this period. The colours also indicate the icon as being from the Moscow School.
Compared with many icons of this subject, the colours here are restrained and austere. The scene is less cluttered, there are fewer dramatis personae on this stage. This serves to highlight the significance of this moment. Jesus, mounted on a white horse (donkeys were unknown in Russia at this period) looks back at the disciples. Ahead of him the elders of the city emerge to greet him. Jesus is situated at the centre of the icon, with the disciples on the left balancing the emerging elders on the right – Jesus is the fulcrum in this carefully composed scene.
Yet His centrality indicates a certain isolation. The disciples who were called to ‘follow’ three years earlier, are hesitant, unsure about what lies ahead. The people at the city gates will, within a week, call for this Rabbi to be crucified. As we gaze on this scene, only Jesus knows what lies ahead. The backward look expresses that the three years of companionship is coming to a close. As Jesus said in John 13: 36, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you shall follow afterward”.
A theologian has written that Holy Week reveals a three stage pattern of Orientation – Disorientation – Reorientation. The poignancy of this scene is that the years of steady orientation will soon be replaced by disorientation. In our own lives we can perhaps recognise that same pattern as, for example, illness, unemployment, bereavement or another cause, disorients our lives and rocks our faith. God can seem ‘other’ than what we expected and we are unsure of the wisdom of the way he is leading. We can see in ourselves those hesitant disciples in the icon.
St Andrew of Crete points us to not to the disciples, but to those in this scene who scamper around, spreading cloaks and throwing palm branches down from the trees – the children:
“Let us run to accompany him as he hastens towards his passion….let us spread before his feet, not garments or soulless olive branches, which delight the eye for a few hours and then wither, but ourselves, clothed in his grace, or rather, clothed completely in him….Let our souls take the place of the welcoming branches as we join today in the children’s holy song: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the King of Israel.” (from Oratio 9 in ramos palmarum: PG 97, 990 – 994; Office of Reading for Palm Sunday)
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