“Now I am beginning to be a disciple. Come fire and cross and grapplings with wild beasts, cuttings and manglings, wrenching of bones, hacking of limbs, crushing of my whole body, come cruel tortures of the devil to assail me. Only may I attain to Jesus Christ.” – St. Ignatius of Antioch, martyr
Mark 14:26-42: After psalms had been sung they left for the Mount of Olives. And Jesus said to them, ‘You will all lose faith, for the scripture says: I shall strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered, however after my resurrection I shall go before you to Galilee’. Peter said, ‘Even if all lose faith, I will not.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘I tell you solemnly, this day, this very night, before the cock crows twice, you will have disowned me three times.’ But he repeated still more earnestly, ‘If I have to die with you, I will never disown you.’ And they all said the same. They came to a small estate called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Stay here while I pray.’ Then he took Peter and James and John with him. And a sudden fear came over him, and great distress. And he said to them, ‘My soul is sorrowful to the point of death. Wait here, and keep awake.’ And going on a little further he threw himself on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, this hour might pass him by. ‘Abba (Father)!’ he said ‘Everything is possible for you. Take this cup away from me. But let it be as you, not I, would have it.’
He came back and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, ‘Simon, are you asleep? Had you not the strength to keep awake one hour? You should be awake, and praying not to be put to the test. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ Again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. And once more he came back and found them sleeping, their eyes were so heavy; and they could find no answer for him. He came back a third time and said to them, ‘You can sleep on now and take your rest. It is all over. The hour has come. Now the Son of Man is to be betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up! Let us go! My betrayer is close at hand already.’
Christ the Lord As his hour draws near, Jesus warns his disciples that they will be thrown into confusion by his apparent defeat, quoting an Old Testament prophecy (Zec 13: 7-9). But Peter refuses to believe either the prophecy or Jesus’ interpretation of it. He has thrown in his lot completely with the Lord, and he is passionately determined to hold true to his pledge. Jesus sees the depths of Peter’s soul, however, and knows that Peter is still depending too much on his own strength and on a false idea of the Kingdom. Even after the Lord reiterates and specifies his prediction of the Apostles’ flight and denial, they still protest. Jesus is sure of his mission and determined to carry it out, but the disciples, like Peter, are still thinking of the Kingdom in merely worldly terms. Jesus makes these predictions and calls to mind the scriptures so that later, when the disciples are reflecting back on this conversation, they will realize that Jesus went into his Passion with full awareness and consent.
They will realize then that although he knew they were going to abandon him in his hour of need, he wasn’t going to hold it against them – he even looks forward to seeing them again after his resurrection. Somehow, they will later see, their abandonment too was part of the plan. To establish his Lordship in their hearts once and for all, he had to strip them of every last scrap of self-sufficiency that still contaminated those hearts. His Kingdom is not of this earth, and so his apostles and all his followers need to learn that to be a citizen of this Kingdom takes more than simply natural affection, determination, and talent. It has to be based on the unshakable conviction of Christ’s love, which frees the soul to trust in God and fulfill God’s will, in spite of earthly fears and repugnance.
The Christian has to trust Christ even more than he trusts himself; the apostles’ coming failure will purify them of their last vestiges of pride and prepare them to spend the rest of their lives following the Lord’s way of humility, obedience, and self-sacrifice. May the Holy Spirit teach us the same lesson without having to send us through the same trial!
Mark 14:26-42 Christ the Teacher Jesus went off to pray in order to align his tormented will with the Father’s will. He didn’t pretend that what God was asking him was easy – it wasn’t. But he wants to be faithful. Just wishing for fidelity, however, is not enough; fidelity has to be won by persistent prayer. St Mark tells us that Jesus went off to pray, came back to his disciples, and then went off to pray again. He did that three times. Three times in the course of an hour or more, Jesus literally threw himself on the ground in order to wrest grace from the Father to bolster his flagging human nature.
The lesson couldn’t be clearer: fidelity to our mission in life takes perseverance in prayer. Jesus suffered unspeakable fear, distress, and sorrow as the guilt of all human sin slowly seeped into his soul and the shadow of the cross darkened his mind. He experienced this Gethsemane for us: to atone for our sins, but also to blaze a trail that we could follow through our own Gethsemane. We each have them. Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection – the Paschal Mystery – is the pattern of each Christian life. If we are to abide in God’s will and accomplish our mission in life, we too must develop sincerity and persistence in our life of prayer. Everyone’s Gethsemane is tailor-made, but the secret to endurance is always the same: persevering in prayer. The spirit is willing, but the flesh – our fallen human nature with its tendencies to comfort and self-centeredness – is weak; it needs the constant nourishment and strengthening that comes from contact with God.
Christ the Friend How did St. Mark and the other evangelists find out about Christ’s Gethsemane experience? The other nine apostles were farther off, and these three were sleeping, so who saw our Lord in his agony? Jesus himself probably told his disciples about it later, after the Resurrection. Imagine that conversation… Jesus asks them if they remember the fateful night and how tired they were. He anxiously hoped for the moral support of their friendship, but they couldn’t stop dozing off. And so he was alone, and the burden of humanity’s sin was laid upon his soul, and the prospect of humiliation, torment, and death was presented to him in all its utter horror, such that his will was assailed and he had to battle with all the strength of his spirit to accept the Father’s will.
Jesus bares his heart to us in this passage. He wants his disciples – us included – to know beyond any possible doubt that his love is faithful. He wants us to know that he understands what it means to suffer, that he took on and experienced every kind of suffering we could ever encounter. He wants us to believe in the possibility of love, of faithfulness, no matter how impossible it may seem. Christ’s strength, which encountered and endured the worst of sufferings, can be our strength, and the strength of those around us, if only we stick by his side as faithful friends. Hail Gethsemane, the Christian’s greatest hope!
Christ in My Life It’s hard for me to picture this, Lord. It’s hard for me to imagine you suffering. You are the Lord! And yet, there it is – you were sorrowful to the point of death. What does that mean? Sorrowful to the point of death… I have sorrows too, Lord. Teach me about yours, so that I can bear mine with your love. Teach me to comfort you in yours, so I find your comfort in mine.
My Gethsemane is so dull, Lord. It’s the daily routine. It’s the unpleasant colleague. It’s the nagging money problem…. Do these count? Do you care about these struggles? Of course you do. These too are chances for me to exercise love, the love of fidelity and perseverance in my life’s mission, and the love that consists in trusting you. Teach me to do your will.
You are God, and yet you experienced the same confusion and oppression and anxiety that plague me. You did it for me. You shared my lot. Thank you, Lord. Teach me to be that generous with those around me. Teach me to be with them as you are with me: patient, self-forgetful, self-sacrificing, dependable, forgiving. Make my heart more and more like yours.
