Of their own free will Adam and Eve fell away from God into sin and thus brought sin and woe and death on their children - the whole human race. Of His own free and loving will did the Son of God and Son of Man, our Lord Jesus Christ, go up to Jerusalem to enter on His vicarious Passion in order to redeem His brethren after the flesh - all the guilty sons of Adam. He took His twelve disciples with Him, that they might be witnesses of His atoning death and become His messengers to proclaim its saving truth to all the world.

We, too, are asked to accompany our Lord on His way to Jerusalem in this holy time of Lent. We can do so only when we follow Him with attentive and reverent spirit to hear and see all the things that happened to Him at Jerusalem. Are we not the sinners for whose sakes He suffers all these cruelties and tortures? Again, we must go with Him in a prayerful spirit. By nature we are blind concerning the true cause and the glorious fruit of our Lord's Passion. We are like the disciples, who, when Jesus spoke to them of His suffering and death, "understood none of these things, and this saying was hid from them."

Does Lent prove of so little blessing to us because we pray so little for opened eyes? Let us sincerely cry to the Lord with the blind man at Jericho: "Lord, that I may receive my sight," that is, that I may understand my guilty part and my personal redemption in Thy suffering. But the main thing is that we accompany our Lord in true faith and say: "For me, for my salvation, dost Thou suffer thus, O my Lord and my God." With such humble, trusting faith in our heart, let us go with our Lord on His way to suffering and death; and may He bless every step we take with Him!

[devotion text by Rev. F. W. Herzberger (1920) -
from the Family Altar - CPH (1957 edition)]
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