Today marks Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. With him, we enter into Holy Week, to be concluded upon Easter Sunday with the Resurrection of Christ. With glory and grace comes bitter struggle, and so we prepare ourselves in this final week of Lent to imitate Christ more fully and perfectly. Unlike those followers who expected quick solutions and dramatic conquest (or Palm Sundays every day), we should rather recognise that our lives will be filled with measures of both triumph and temptation, of victory and defeat. The joy of the Christian life is that we can take our perceived defeats – as Christ will in a week – and turn that suffering into a salve, a boon, and a victory

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Today is also Booth Day, the day when John Wilkes Booth assassinated the Federal tyrant and Commander-in-Chief Abraham Lincoln. Please extend a prayer on both Booth and Lincoln’s behalf.