Our Lord's eyes are upon every single one of us. He is always seeking our hearts and even more so in His glorious resurrection He is seeking hearts to be set aflame once again. Hearts that have grown cold and have denied Him just like Peter. Yet in the reading of todays Gospel, it is our Lord who is seeking Peter to be reunited with Himself. The same is for us, if we have strayed or turned away from God, He is seeking us out once again so that we can come back to Him.

Our Lord's love for us is unfathomable. His sacrifice on the Cross for all mankind should deeply wound us not only for Pascha or for the succeeding Holy 50, but it should be at every moment. Whenever I take away my gaze from Him I begin to die, I begin to fall away from the very source of Life Himself. Yet He is merciful and at every moment, if I should look up to Him and to His cross, then once again I am filled with His love and His mercy. May our Lord grant us all to be wounded with His love and may we spend the rest of our days gazing upon Him, lifting our eyes unto Him so that we may find salvation.

Everything can be answered by prayer. As we approach Good Friday, the Church in Her wisdom slows down on all our prayers and praises in order that we would contemplate and offer up prayers unto our Lord for His sacrifice for us. Let us all draw near to our Lord in prayer as we walk with Him to his trial and ultimately His crucifixion tomorrow.

Mary breaking the flask of perfume over Christ's feet in preparation for is burial exemplifies to us how we should be with God each and every day. During Pascha the Church has a number of prayer and praise services, accompanied by an increase in the number of liturgies. All of this is to force us to draw nearer to God now more than ever, however this can only be fully embraced if we also within these services give all of ourselves to God. Often we give God little 'drops' and convince ourselves that this is enough, but Mary shows us that we have to give God our all and in return He will come and live within our hearts and reign within us. And the joy of His resurrection will only then be complete within us.

It is so easy to fall into the trap of routine. Coming to Church, receiving the mysteries, doing services. And yet amidst all of that, do we actually know our Lord? Do we intimately seek Him and pray to Him? Will it come to the end of days and will we hear those fearful and dreaded words? Now is the time for sobriety and for watchfulness that God would help us to be faithful and to be those wise servants who are awaiting their Masters arrival!

When we know the power of our Lord, then we can also truly come as we are. We can come with our sins and knowingly submit them to Him. We can come before Him and ask Him to forgive us and to heal us.

The entrance of Christ into Jerusalem is how He exactly reveals Himself to us as well. In humility. And in turn we too, if we desire for Him enter in and to be enthroned upon our hearts must also humble ourselves.

What truly matters? In this story from the Gospel today, once this man was healed by Christ nothing else in the world mattered to him. He was before the feet of the Living God. For us we are encouraged by Fr Sam to insert ourselves into these stories and live in the same way.

We must not become like the Pharisees and lose sight of the true goal, the true end, Christ. Sometimes we can find ourselves being entangled within the practices and the commandments and seeing them as the end, however all things have been given to us by God to lead us unto Him.