God's people rejoiced and celebrated Christ's entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday crying out for the very reason He entered the city that day; "Hosanna" which means Lord save us! Later that week they would call for this same one whom they called Rabbi to be crucified, a means of capital punishment detestable to all Jews. They denied Him and abandoned Him even crying out, "Let the blood of the man be on our heads and on our children." This week we set our souls not to deny Him, but to follow Him to the Cross that we might experience Him in the Resurrection.

Self-examination is the opening of the door of our hearts to the Holy Spirit in such a way that He might reveal to us anything that works against our experiential union with Christ our God. Today we look at a method of self-examination through which the Holy Spirit can reveal those particular vices and move us toward Christ where He can exchange those devastating vices for the beauty and peace of His virtues.

There are two truths or tensions that must be kept in place for Christ to be revealed to us from the Holy Cross. One truth is the suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ upon the Cross. We must always encounter His suffering and the volumes it speaks that He willingly did so out of His abounding love for us. The other truth is the glory of all that Christ won for us through the Cross and what He became for us because of the Cross. Today we focus on Christ our High Priest and Mediator as we see in Hebrews 9. We find the Church's teaching that everything the High Priest of the Old Covenant did on the Day of Atonement was a shadow that would be fulfilled in our Lord Jesus Christ. What a wonder regarding how far God has gone through Jesus Christ to stack the deck in our favor for our salvation.

There are so many reasons that should cause the soul to well up with joy and rejoice in the Lord. But have we considered that simply being a true disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ should be a source of great joy? What is a disciple? It is one who follows another like sheep to a shepherd. Today we look at two testimonies where Christ invited His disciples to be an active part in His ministry to humanity and the joy that came from those experiences. Those who follow Christ desiring that His will be done, they are the ones who will be filled with great joy and rejoicing in their lives.

When we look at the narrative of the Archangel Gabriel's announcement to the Blessed Virgin Mary of God's intention, we see so much about both Christ our God ourselves. At the conception of Christ in the womb of this most blessed woman, we see the re-creation and refashioning of mankind for all time. We also see the prefiguring of our Baptism. And, because of the prefiguring of our Baptism, we see our new identity in Christ bestowed upon us.

The last thing Satan wants is for us to cooperate with God in self-examination. Self-examination opens the soul to God. It is in self-examination that Christ reveals Himself to us which illuminates all that is within the soul that He longs to heal and mend. Without that illumination, we have no hope to be made whole again. Today we discuss how to approach this self-examination and the encouragement regarding all that Christ does for us when we cooperate with Him in this discipline.

Just as Christ's prescription of fasting and increased prayer grows the fruit of the Holy Spirit, self-control, in our lives; prayer and fasting does even more by His grace. When we fast and pray the very virtues of Christ and His nature blossom in our lives. Today we look at the greatest of all virtues, love. As the love of God grows in our lives, our vices diminish and fade away. Today is an exploration of how God grants liberty to the soul of His people as His love grows within us.

When we engage in the Lenten Fast, we fast in body as we deny our cravings for food bringing those cravings into submission to Christ our God and His directions for us. But we must also fast in spirit. When Satan brings temptations our way, in the same way as we do with food, we subject those temptations and our cravings to the will of God. We are called to stand firm and, as St. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4, "possess our vessel in sanctification and honor." Today we look at what it means for the Christian to stand firm in times of temptation that we might experience Christ and His victory over Satan in our own lives.

Everything Jesus did through the Incarnation, He did to clear a path for us to return to Him and to Paradise. Jesus fasting for 40 days in the wilderness, then being tempted by Satan, and His overcoming of his adversary is no exception. In doing so, He gave us the grace-filled path that leads us to overcome the deceiver in our lives and be finally freed from our besetting sins. Today we look at what Christ is doing in us if we will follow Him in the fast of Great Lent.

The last thing Satan wants is for the people of God to experience the fullness of heaven and earth joining together with Christ in our midst. And this is precisely what happens every time we gather to offer ourselves to God and for God to offer Himself to us. Today we examine the ways our enemy sneaks in to keep us from this experience. And we look at the wonder of what the Lord our God is doing for us as He is present with us and we present ourselves to Him.