In the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit, amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me.

I adore you with profound reverence.

I ask your pardon for my sins

and the grace to make this time of prayer fruitful.

My immaculate mother, St. Joseph, my father, and Lord,

my guardian angel, and deceit for me.

As we put ourselves in the presence of our Lord,

we are going to contemplate our Lord,

obviously through the gospel,

but more precisely through the geographic area revealed by the whole Bible,

but specifically by the gospel itself.

We're going to contemplate the area at that time of the Roman Empire called Palestine,

where the Lord was born, where he grew up, where he worked, where he worked his miracles, gave his sermons, and redeemed us on the cross, overcoming death and sin, and rose from the dead, and lastly ascended into heaven.

To be honest, I have always dreamt and aspired to the possibility of making a pilgrimage

to the Holy Land.

When that became possible to my great surprise, given my own workload and time constraints,

and schedule and the shortage of priests to take on the pastoral work required in my particular situation and circumstances.

I felt the dream come true, but with a bit of trepidation,

that with all that build up over the years of visiting the Holy Land,

perhaps I would be disappointed.

We all have the experience of idealizing something or someone or some event excessively to find it falling short of our expectations.

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