GRIEF AT GETHSEMANE

Given this subject matter, related to Jesus’ Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane at the start of His Passion, I'd like to start this essay off with a short aspiration prayer.

Lord, may your Passion have been as efficacious, and may it not have been in vain, for as many souls as possible.

During the Lenten season, when we focus on the first of the Sorrowful Mysteries, the Agony in the Garden, an intriguing question emerges: What could make God sweat blood?

We read in Chapter 22 of Luke’s Gospel Jesus’ words in prayer to His Heavenly Father who would become ours as well by Christ’s saving sacrifice at Calvary "'Father, if you are willing, remove this chalice from me; nevertheless not my will, but yours, be done'. And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down upon the ground” (Luke 22:42-44).

What could make God sweat blood? From private revelations Our Lord has given to mystics and religious, even echoed by Archbishop Fulton Sheen in his book Life of Christ, we see Jesus struggling in those 2 or 3 hours in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane before His arrest, as He saw visions of 2,000 plus years of human depravity, and violence, up ahead, along with indifference to His church, and people turning away from Him in droves and being lost for Eternity.

In the words of Archbishop Sheen, Jesus saw “the tepidity, malice and corruption of an infinite number of Christians, the broken marriage vows, lies, slanders, adulteries, murders, apostasies” In His Divinity Christ understood the necessity of His Passion for our salvation but in His humanity, He understandably dreaded it.

Jesus told Sister Josefa Menendez, a Spanish nun, in 1923, concerning the horrific visions he saw in the hours right before His arrest “there burst upon Me the wrath of an angry and offended God, and in order to appease His Majesty I offered myself as security for sinful man, I, His Son, to calm His anger and satisfy His Justice. But so great was the anguish and so mortal the agony of My human nature under the strain and weight of so much guilt, that a bloody sweat poured from Me to the ground."

Our Lord further lamented to Sister Menéndez, a Spanish nun in 1923, in recalling that night “O sinners who thus torture Me . . . will this blood bring salvation and life, or will it be shed in vain for you? How can I express My sorrow at the thought of this sweat, this anguish, this agony, this blood . . . useless for so many souls.”

Think of the emotional strain many in our police and military experience when dealing with murderous events up close front and center. In the case of our military we can be talking here about PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder) from often blood soaked memories of times in battle.

And for our police, just having to deal with and seeing the smaller scale but no less horrific homicides can shake them on some level when confronted with the worst aspects of our fallen nature as well.

For Jesus, who knew human nature quite well, as we read in John’s Gospel 2:24 this was an especially grueling kind of combat with Satan even before anyone laid a hand on Him.

He had been able to give the devil robust rebukes to the three temptations the Evil One gave Him at the start of His ministry after His 40 day fast in the desert.

But now when faced with all the depravities in which fallen humanity would be engaged in the centuries to follow it is no wonder that in His humanity as well as in His Divinity He would feel so overwhelmed.

The Augustinian nun Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich had numerous visions of our Lord and His ministry in the early 19th century. A number of them are recorded in the great book for Lenten and other such meditations The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

There we read, among other incidents/things, that in the midst of all this Satan hit our Lord with a taunt rather than a temptation when he sneered “Can you resolve to suffer for such ungrateful reprobates?”

Sister Emmerich covers this all further in the book just mentioned in great heartbreaking detail, which can remind us of just how much Christ hated sin but loved us. We read there that Jesus “fell on his face, overwhelmed with unspeakable sorrow, and all the sins of the world displayed themselves before him, under countless forms and in all their real deformity. He took them all upon himself, and in his prayer offered his own adorable Person to the justice of his Heavenly Father, in payment for so awful a debt.

But Satan, who was enthroned amid all these horrors, and even filled with diabolical joy at the sight of them, let loose his fury against Jesus, and displayed before the eyes of his soul increasingly awful visions, at the same time addressing his adorable humanity in words such as these: ‘Takest thou even this sin upon thyself? Art thou willing to bear its penalty? Art thou prepared to satisfy for all these sins?’"

Sister Emmerich related further about how Jesus saw in the future in His visions “the tepidity, malice and corruption of an infinite number of Christians, the lies and deceptions of proud teachers, all the sacrileges of wicked priests, the fatal consequences of each sin, and the abomination of desolation in the kingdom of God, in the sanctuary of those ungrateful human beings whom he was about to redeem with his blood at the cost of unspeakable sufferings. The scandals of all ages, down to the present day and even to the end of the world—every species of error, deception, mad fanaticism, obstinacy and malice—were displayed before his eyes, and he beheld, as it were floating before him, all the apostates, heresiarchs, and pretended reformers, who deceive men by an appearance of sanctity…

They vied with each other in tearing the seamless robe of his Church; many illtreated, insulted, and denied him, and many turned contemptuously away, shaking their heads at him, avoiding his compassionate embrace, and hurrying on to the abyss where they were finally swallowed up.”

Indeed, Jesus saw the tragedy of His Crucifixion straight ahead. However. We must keep in mind that this seemingly ignominious defeat turned into a triumph in that, by His Passion, death, and resurrection, Our Lord opened up the gates of heaven for Fallen Humanity. Sister Emmerich related some good news in her vision that gave our Lord strength.

It turns out that in addition to an angel that gave Him strength, as Luke relates, He saw the army of the Blessed of all ages to come to boost his morale as His time for battle approached. Sister Emmerich continues in a vision giving Jesus and us as well hope, light in the midst of so much darkness:

"Most beautiful and consoling was this vision, in which he beheld the salvation and sanctification flowing forth in ceaseless streams from the fountain of redemption opened by his death. The Apostles, disciples, virgins, and holy women, the martyrs, confessors, hermits, popes, and bishops, and large bands of religious of both sexes—in one word, the entire army of the blessed—appeared before him…Their whole life, and all their actions, merits, and power, as well as all the glory of their triumph, came solely from their union with the merits of Jesus Christ…

The army of the future saints passed before the soul of our Lord, which was thus placed between the desiring patriarchs, and the triumphant band of the future blessed, and these two armies joining together, and completing one another, so to speak, surrounded the loving Heart of our Saviour as with a crown of victory. This most affecting and consoling spectacle bestowed a degree of strength and comfort upon the soul of Jesus.

Ah! He so loved his brethren and creatures that, to accomplish the redemption of one single soul, he would have accepted with joy all the sufferings to which he was now devoting himself. As these visions referred to the future, they were diffused to a certain height in the air."

There’s no doubt that, while He prayed three times to His Heavenly Father to remove this chalice of great suffering, He nonetheless accepted in in loving obedience both to His Father and to those passages in scripture that foretold His Passion and Crucifixion as being essential to God's plan for our redemption.

And seeing that multitude for whom His upcoming sacrifice at Calvary would be no means be in vain, rather than try to flee from this duty, he could finish up His time in agonizing prayer, saying to his drowsy disciples Peter, James, and John “Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer [Judas] is at hand" (Matt 26:45).

Did he see you and me somehow in that army of encouragement? Let us strive to be among those in that army, that Jesus could see then and think, "Yes, my being brutally mocked, scourged and crucified will not have been in vain for them, that my Passion and death in the hours to come will bring them Eternal Life.”

God Bless,

Christopher Castagnoli
for www.ourcatholicprayers.com

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