The Agony of Jesus in the Garden

LISTEN  Volume III Book II Chapters XII - XIII THE PRAYER OF OUR LORD IN THE GARDEN AND ITS MYSTERIES. THE PRAYER OF OUR LORD IN THE GARDEN AND ITS MYSTERIES.

The sacrifice of His natural life, besides being necessary for our Redemption, was also demanded as a return for the joy of having in His human body experienced the glory of the Transfiguration. 

On account of the glory then communicated to His sacred body He held Himself bound to subject it to suffering, deeming that a recompense of what He had received. This we see verified also in the three Apostles, who were witnesses as well of the glorious as of the sorrowful mystery. This they themselves now understood, being informed thereof by an especial enlightenment. 

Moreover the immense love of our Savior for us demanded that full sway be given to this mysterious sorrow. For if He had caused it to stop short of the highest which that sorrow was capable of, His love would not have rested satisfied, nor would it have been so evident that His love was not to be extinguished by the multitude of tribulations (Cant. 8, 7). 

At the same time He showed thereby His charity toward the Apostles, who were with Him and were now much disturbed by perceiving, that His hour of suffering and death, which He had so often and in so many ways foretold them, was now at hand. This interior disturbance and fear confounded and confused them without their daring to speak of it. 

Therefore the most loving Savior sought to put them more at rest by manifesting to them His own sorrow unto death. By the sight of His own affliction and anxiety they were to take heart at the fears and anxieties of their own souls. 

There was still another mystery contained in this sorrow of the Lord, which referred especially to the three Apostles, saint Peter, John and James. 

For, more than all the rest, they were imbued with an exalted conception of the greatness and Divinity of their Master as far as the excellence of His doctrine, the holiness of His works, and the power of His miracles were concerned. 

They realized more completely and wondered more deeply at His dominion over all creation. 

In order that they might be confirmed in their belief of His being a man capable of suffering, it was befitting that they should know as eyewitnesses His truly human sorrow and affliction. 

By the testimony of these three Apostles who were distinguished by such favors, the holy Church was afterwards to be well fortified against the errors, which the devil would try to spread against the belief in the humanity of Christ our Savior. Thus would the rest of the faithful have the consolation of this firmly established belief in their own affliction and sorrow.  Interiorly enlightened in this truth, the three Apostles were exhorted by the Author of life by the words: "Wait for Me, watch and pray with Me." 

He wished to inculcate the practice of all that He had taught them and to make them constant in their belief. He thereby reminded them of the danger of backsliding and of the duty of watchfulness and prayer in order to recognize and resist the enemy, remaining always firm in the hope of seeing His name exalted after the ignominy of His Passion. 

With this exhortation the Lord separated Himself a short distance from the three Apostles. He threw Himself with His divine face upon the ground and prayed to the eternal Father: "Father, if it is possible, let this chalice pass from Me" (Matth. 26, 38). 

This prayer Christ our Lord uttered, though He had come down from heaven with the express purpose of really suffering and dying for men; though He had counted as naught the shame of His Passion, had willingly embraced it and rejected all human consolation; though He was hastening with most ardent love into the jaws of death, to affronts, sorrows and afflictions; though He had set such a high price upon men, that He determined to redeem them at the shedding of His lifeblood. 

Since by virtue of His divine and human wisdom and His inextinguishable love He had shown Himself so superior to the natural fear of death, that it seems this petition did not arise from any motive solely coming from Himself. That this was so in fact, was made known to me in the light which was vouchsafed me concerning the mysteries contained in this prayer of the Savior. 

In order to explain what I mean, I must state, that on this occasion Jesus treated with the eternal Father about an affair, which was by far the most important of all, namely, in how far the Redemption gained by His Passion and Death should affect the hidden predestination of the saints. 

In this prayer Christ offered, on His part, to the eternal Father His torments, His precious blood and His Death for all men as an abundant price for all the mortals and for each one of the human born till that time and yet to be born to the end of the world; and, on the part of mankind, He presented the infidelity, ingratitude and contempt with which sinful man was to respond to His frightful Passion and Death; 

He presented also the loss which He was to sustain from those who would not profit by His clemency and condemn themselves to eternal woe.

Though to die for His friends and for the predestined was pleasing to Him and longingly desired by our Savior; yet to die for the reprobate was indeed bitter and painful; for with regard to them the impelling motive for accepting the pains of death was wanting. 

This sorrow was what the Lord called a chalice, for the Hebrews were accustomed to use this word for signifying anything that implied great labor and pain. The Savior Himself had already used this word on another occasion, when in speaking to the sons of Zebedee He asked them: whether they could drink the chalice, which the Son of Man was to drink (Matth 20, 22).

This chalice then was so bitter for Christ our Lord, because He knew that His drinking it would not only be without fruit for the reprobate, but would be a scandal to them and redound to their greater chastisement and pain on account of their despising it (I Cor. 1, 23).

I understood therefore that in this prayer Christ besought His Father to let this chalice of dying for the reprobate pass from Him. Since now His Death was not to be evaded, He asked that none, if possible, should be lost; He pleaded, that as His Redemption would be superabundant for all, that therefore it should be applied to all in such a way as to make all, if possible, profit by it in an efficacious manner; and if this was not possible, He would resign Himself to the will of His eternal Father. 

Our Savior repeated this prayer three times at different intervals (Matth. 26, 44), pleading the longer in His agony in view of the importance and immensity of the object in question (Luke 22, 43). 

According to our way of understanding, there was a contention or altercation between the most sacred humanity and the Divinity of Christ. 

For this humanity, in its intense love for men who were of His own nature, desired that all should attain eternal salvation through His Passion; while His Divinity, in its secret and high judgments, had fixed the number of the predestined and in its Divine equity could not concede its blessings to those who so much despised them, and who, of their own free will, made themselves unworthy of eternal life by repelling the kind intentions of Him who procured and offered it to them. 

From this conflict arose the agony of Christ, in which He prayed so long and in which He appealed so earnestly to the power and majesty of His omnipotent and eternal Father.

As a ratification of this Divine decree, while yet our Master was in His agony, the eternal Father for the third time sent the archangel Michael to the earth in order to comfort Him by a sensible message and confirmation of what He already knew by the infused science of His most holy soul; for the angel could not tell our Lord anything He did not know, nor could he produce any additional effect on His interior consciousness for this purpose. 

But, as I related above, Christ had suspended the consolation, which He could have derived from His human nature from this knowledge and love, leaving it to its full capacity for suffering, as He afterwards also expressed Himself on the Cross. In lieu of this alleviation and comfort, which He had denied Himself, He was recompensed to a certain extent, as far as His human senses were concerned, by this embassy of the archangel.

Saint Michael, in the name of the eternal Father, intimated and represented to Him in audible words, what He already knew, that it was not possible for those to be saved who were unwilling; that the complaisance of the eternal Father in the number of the just, although smaller than the number of the reprobate was great; that among the former was His most holy Mother, a worthy fruit of His Redemption; that His Redemption would also bear its fruits in the Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, Virgins and Confessors, who should signalize themselves in His love and perform admirable works for the exaltation of the name of the Most High.

Let us now return to the Cenacle, where the Queen of heaven had retired with the holy women of her company. From her retreat, by divine enlightenment, She saw most clearly all the mysteries and doings of Her most holy Son in the garden.

She begged the eternal Father to suspend in Her all human alleviation and comfort, both in the sensitive and in the spiritual part of Her being, so that nothing might hinder Her from suffering to the highest degree in union with Her Divine Son. 

She prayed that She might be permitted to feel and participate in Her virginal body all the pains of the wounds and tortures about to be undergone by Jesus. 

This petition was granted by the blessed Trinity and the Mother, in consequence, suffered all the torments of Her most holy Son in exact duplication, as I shall relate later.

Although they were such, that, if the right hand of the Almighty had not preserved Her, they would have caused Her death many times over; yet, on the other hand, these sufferings, inflicted by God Himself, were like a pledge and a new lease of life. 

For in Her most ardent love She would have considered it incomparably more painful to see Her Divine Son suffer and die without being allowed to share in His torments.

Read: Volume III Book II Chapter XII