Excepts below from The Mystical City of God

Jesus in the Wilderness Surrounded by Angels by Charles de La Fosse, 1690; The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, Russia

By His heroic exercises of virtue He wished to give us the first lesson of a Christian and spiritual life and to teach us by these triumphs of Christian perfection, how we are to strengthen our weakness and discourage our common enemies by continued battle and victories, lest we be otherwise delivered over to them by the fluctuations of our own wills.

Although the Lord, as being God, was infinitely above the demon and, as man without deceit of sin, supremely holy and the Master over all creation (I Pet. 2, 22); He nevertheless wished to overcome in His human nature, by His personal justice and holiness, all the vices and their author; and, therefore, He offered his most holy humanity to the bufferings of temptation, concealing His superiority from His invisible enemies.

Without delay Christ our Lord pursued His journey from the Jordan to the desert after his Baptism. Only his holy angels attended and accompanied Him, serving and worshipping Him, singing the divine praises on account of what He was now about to undertake for the salvation of mankind. He came to the place chosen by Him for his fast: a desert spot among bare and beetling rocks, where there was also a cavern much concealed.

Here He halted, choosing it for his habitation during the days of his fast (Matth. 4, 1). In deepest humility He prostrated Himself upon the ground which was always the prelude of his prayer and that of his most blessed Mother. He praised the eternal Father and gave Him thanks for the works of His divine right hand and for having according to his pleasure afforded Him this retirement. In a suitable manner He thanked even this desert for accepting His presence and keeping Him hidden from the world during the time He was to spend there. He continued His prayers prostrate in the form of a cross, and this was his most frequent occupation in the desert; for in this manner He often prayed to the eternal Father for the salvation of men. During these prayers He sometimes sweated blood.

After the Savior had begun his fast He persevered therein without eating anything for forty days, offering up his fast to the eternal Father as a satisfaction for the disorder and sins to which men are drawn by the so vile and debasing, yet so common and even so much esteemed vice of gluttony. Just as our Lord over came this vice so He also vanquished all the rest, and He made recompense to the eternal Judge and supreme Legislator for the injuries perpetrated through these vices by men.

According to the enlightenment vouchsafed to me, our Savior, in order to assume the office of Preacher and Teacher and to become our Mediator and Redeemer before the Father, thus vanquished all the vices of mortals and He satisfied the offenses committed through them by the exercises of the virtues contrary to them, just as He did in regard to gluttony. Although He continued this exercise during all his life with the most ardent charity, yet during his fast He directed in a special manner all his efforts toward this purpose.

A loving Father, whose sons have committed great crimes for which they are to endure the most horrible punishment, sacrifices all his possessions in order to ward off their impending fate: so our most loving Father and Brother, Jesus Christ, wished to pay our debts.

In satisfaction for our pride He offered His profound humility; for our avarice, His voluntary poverty and total privation of all that was His; for our base and lustful inclinations, His penance and austerity; for our hastiness and vengeful anger, His meekness and charity toward all enemies; for our negligence and laziness, His ceaseless labors; for our deceitfulness and our envy, His candid and upright sincerity and truthfulness and the sweetness of His love and His treatment.

In this manner He continued to appease the just Judge and solicited pardon for us disobedient and bastard children; and He not only obtained this pardon for them, but He merited for them new graces, gifts and deliverances, so that with them they might make themselves worthy of His eternal company and of seeing His Father and Himself, in their participation and inheritance for all eternity. Though He could have obtained all this for us by the most insignificant of his works; yet He acted not like we. He demonstrated his love so abundantly, that our in gratitude and hardness of heart will have no excuse.

While the Savior was in the desert He made every day three hundred genuflections, which also was done by our Queen Mary in her oratory; the other portions of her time She spent in composing hymns with the angels. Thus imitating Christ the Lord, the Holy Queen co-operated with Him in all His prayers and petitions, gaining the same victories over the vices, and on her part proportionately satisfying for them by her virtues and her exertions. Thus it happened, that, while Christ as our Redeemer gained for us so many blessings and abundantly paid all our debts, most holy Mary, as His co-adjuticator and our Mother, interposed her merciful intercession with Him and became our Mediatrix to the fullest extent possible for a mere creature.

Psalm 90:1

Prayer for Inner Healing

Lord Jesus, You came to heal
Our wounded and troubled hearts,
I beg You to heal the torments that
Cause anxiety in my heart;
I beg You in a particular way, to heal All who are the cause of sin.

I beg You to come into my life
And heal me of the psychological harms
That struck me in my early years
And from the injuries that they caused
Throughout my life.

Lord Jesus, You know my burdens,
I lay them all on Your Good Shepherds’ Heart.
I beseech You - by the merits of the great,
open Wound in Your heart - To heal
the small wounds that are in mine.
Heal the pain of my memories,
So that nothing that has happened to me
Will cause me to remain in pain and anguish,
Filled with anxiety.

Heal, O Lord, All these wounds
that have been the cause of all
the evil that is rooted in my life,
I want to forgive all those who have
offended me.

Look to those inner sores
That make me unable to forgive.
You who came to forgive the afflicted of heart,
Please, heal my own heart.

Heal, my Lord Jesus, those intimate wounds
That cause me physical illness.
I offer You my heart.
Accept it, Lord, purify it and give me
The sentiments of Your Divine Heart.
Help me to be meek and humble.

Heal me, O Lord,
From the pain caused by death
Of my loved ones, which is oppressing me.
Grant me to regain peace and joy
In the knowledge that You are the
Resurrection and the Life.
Make me an authentic witness
to your Resurrection,
Your victory over sin and death,
Your living presence among us.
Amen

Prayer by Fr. Gabriele Amorth from his book An Exorcist Tells His Story, Appendix: Prayers of Deliverance; Ignatius Press; 1990

All excerpts from The Mystical City of God by Sister Mary of Jesus of Agreda, as manifested by Our Lady; tr.. Rev. George J. Blatter http://themostholyrosary.com/mystical-city.htm

Lent - 40 Days in the Desert - Jesus Christ takes on our vices to strengthen and heal us