The agony of the Lord in the Garden of Olives: the first painful mystery
by Ottavio De Bertolis
We can contemplate the scene, while we recite the "Hail Marys": here we see how the Lord is prostrate on the ground, and begs the Father to have mercy on his disciples, who are about to abandon him, and on the whole world, which does not have him welcomed. Here the words of the Psalm are fulfilled: “I was distressed as for a friend, for a brother; as if in mourning for my mother I prostrated myself in pain”; and we know that Jesus called brother, sister and mother those who do the will of the Father of him: and to do the will of the Father is to believe in Him whom He has sent.
We see in this mystery how Jesus prayed for Peter, when he told him that, if Satan had sought them to sift them like wheat, nevertheless He had already prayed so that their faith would not fail. Jesus seems to have almost absolved Peter in advance, when he recommended him: "Once you have repented, strengthen your brothers". Jesus also forgives the future, not just the past. We can feel all of us included and almost enveloped in this great prayer of intercession, which did not only concern Peter and the other disciples, but concerns all those who believed through their faith.
After all, that prayer did not stop in Gethsemane; it continues, and will continue until the end of the ages, since Jesus Christ continues to pray for us, as a true and eternal priest, at the right hand of the Father. “We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our infirmities,” states the author of the Letter to the Hebrews. And it is the same image: He who prostrated himself for us in the darkness of the Garden of Olives, is also the same one who, raised and resurrected at the right hand of the Father, in the light of his glory, continually intercedes on our behalf. “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with full confidence, that we may receive mercy, and find grace, and be helped in time of need.” The psalmist also says of Jesus: “I waited for compassion, but in vain; consolers, but I haven't found any."
And the Lord in fact asked the disciples: “My soul is sad until death. Stay here and pray with me." But they fell asleep. Let us contemplate how we sleep - in a figurative sense, that is, we are not present - when He calls us to be vigilant, in prayer, in charity and in good works, and the darkness or fog of everyday life surrounds us from all sides. Yet Saint Paul reminds us that "whether we are awake or asleep, we therefore belong to the Lord", that is, we are always in His faithful and merciful hands, even when we do not see it, do not believe it, do not think it: in fact we were bought to dear price, precisely at the price of that blood that we contemplate flowing like sweat on the body of Jesus. We know that this is true, it is possible, and doctors in fact tell us that profound anguish, marked by mortal pain, causes a dilation of the capillaries, so that the body is covered with specks of blood, like pinheads: I myself knew a person who died in this condition.
Let us then contemplate from here a mystery of obedience such as has never happened: the Son became obedient until death, entering as if into a tunnel of which the end cannot be seen; entering into anguish as he sinks into an icy swamp, he was swallowed up by the snares of the underworld, and had no consolation. He drank this cup to the dregs, to the bottom; obeying is beautiful when the wine is still good, the glass overflows with joy, but when it reaches the dregs, that dirty and bitter dust that remains at the bottom of the bottle, then you have to force yourself not to spit it out. Jesus entrusted himself to the Father, without any light.
He entered into man's deepest desperation, so that no one could say that they had been deprived of his compassion. He had to suffer more than anyone if he wanted to save everyone. The words that He said to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, the great apostle of the Sacred Heart, come to mind: Here I suffered more than all the rest of my passion, seeing myself abandoned by heaven and earth. No one can understand the intensity of those pains. It is the same pain that the soul in sin feels when it presents itself before the holiness of God, and the divine majesty crushes it and sinks it into the abyss of his justice. Nothing different from what Paul says: “He, who knew no sin, was treated as sin in our favor”. And Isaiah: “He bore our iniquities, he bore our sorrows.”
Nothing is as sanctifying as meditating on this mystery: there you will find mercy and justice, faithfulness and obedience, the law and the prophets together. Watch and pray too, because Jesus' agony will last until the end of the world.