Today we celebrate God’s goodness and give him thanks and praise not only for instituting two Sacraments on Holy Thursday evening for us his Church, which would be vital for our journey and for our salvation, but also for the agony he would have to endure in the Garden of Gethsemane foreshadowing the horrific pains he was about to experience that evening and on Good Friday so as to redeem us and become the source for all the sanctifying grace we find in each of the seven Sacraments.
And so the Lord gives us his Body and Blood on Holy Thursday. What celebration! What love beyond all telling! All one has to do is become aware of the history (meaning, the prefigures and types in the Old Testament) and our Lord’s fulfillment of all the prophecies connected to how he would give us his everything, demonstrably so, by gifting us his very own and precious Body and Blood which, on a supernatural, precisely because it’s HIS Body and Blood, contains power to bring us to eternal life, if we but collaborate with his plan. A lot packed into that one statement, for sure. We can do our own research into the Eucharistic miracles which also testify to everything our Lord told us about it, for he is the truth.
However, today we wish to focus on something which doesn’t get as much attention as it should on Holy Thursday, mainly because most people overlook the fact that on this day, more specifically, on this evening, Jesus goes out to his death beginning with his agony in the garden.
We would do well to reflect on this great agony that Jesus endures here to be able to better grasp the premeditated nature of his sacrifice. In other words, that it didn’t just happen by accident or as something unexpected, but was already in the eternal heart and mind of God from even before he created all things. It’s all a part of his beautiful masterpiece of love, and we shall look upon Love for time unending if we embrace the Spotless Lamb who is being led to the slaughter and who utters not a word knowing he is about to make paradise possible for us. Getting to heaven won’t be easy, but without these pains of our Saviour, the gates would always and forever be shut to us, so, THIS is the key—Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection. It is why we said at the beginning of the week that all of it can be summed up beneath the umbrella of the “Pasqual Mystery” - Pasqua, “Passover” — our passing over from this earthly journey to the eternal realm of God’s kingdom.
In his agony in the garden, we are given an insider’s look, if you will, into the beautiful authenticity of Christ’s human nature which shows us how very real it was, even to the point of sweating drops of blood due to the trauma, as opposed to so many erroneous and confusing philosophies which contend otherwise, both in the past but even at present.
A heretical sect dating back to Apostolic times for example was that of the Docetists. The dokesis, "appearance" or "semblance", of a human being is what they ascribed to Christ, but not a true human nature like ours. His appearance among us in human form was like a costume he wore, but not the real thing. The Lord’s extreme anguish and sufferings as exemplified by his Agony in the Garden is an appeal to such sceptics that God indeed was from all eternity, and the Second Person assumed into his divine nature, the human. Human nature is assumed into the divine, and not divine assumed into the human… because it is on the divine that all things rely for subsistence, not the other way around. What he assumed wasn’t a costume, but humanity in its fullness yet without sin.
A true human nature is complex with many emotions, sentiments and incorporates a mixture of thought and will. Jesus here feels the need for keeping all of that linked to the Father through prayer. We see his anguish, fear, and dread. He was overwhelmed and sorrowful as he is betrayed by one and abandoned by all.
He shows a need for the support also of his human companions, and is dismayed to find them sleeping while he is anguishing. Notice, none of them go over to console him or ask him if he’s okay. It’s almost like they’re oblivious to the need of their leader now in dire need of their attentiveness.
In his most crucial hour, he felt the help of not one of those apostles whom by then he held to be his inner circle. Rather, they slept.
Saint Padre Pio had a particular devotion to the Agony of Jesus in the Garden, as had St Gemma Galgani and Blessed Elena Guerra. There are some spiritual gifts and graces that only come from meditating upon this part of the passion of Jesus. In part of his meditation he imagines what it must have been like for Jesus to find his most treasured apostles sleeping. He says,
“Jesus saw all this with his divine eyes. He seemed to say: 'You, my friends and disciples, sleep while my enemies watch and draw near to arrest me. Thou, Peter, whom I thought steadfast enough to follow me even unto death, thou sleepest now. From the beginning thou gavest me proof of thy weaknesses. But be of good cheer. I have assumed thy weakness and I have prayed for thee. When thou hast confessed thy fault, I will be thy strength and thou shalt feed my flock . . . . . . And thou, John, thou too art asleep. Thou who felt the beatings of my heart, couldst thou not watch with me for one hour? Rise and let us go, there is no time left for sleep. The enemy is at the gate!”
With this in mind we thank God for everything he went through on our behalf. We thank him for his gracious mercy and abundant love which was ready to suffer to the very end.
May our Lord continue to reveal to us the depths of his love through our priests and his Body and Blood which he provides to us, along with his mercy and blessings, through their hands. Lord Jesus, High and Eternal Priest, have mercy on us and on the whole world. We conclude with a prayer from Saint Padre Pio which wonderfully brings together the Eucharist and the Agony our Lord suffered in the garden:
“O, my Jesus. Give me strength when my weak nature rebels against all the ills that threaten it, so that I may with love accept the pain and distress of this life in exile. I adhere with all my strength to thy merits, thy sufferings, thy expiation and thy tears so that I may work with thee in the work of redemption and that I may have the strength to flee from sin, the sole cause of thy agony, of thy bloody sweat and thy death.
Destroy in me all that displeases thee and imprint on my heart with the fire of thy sacred love all thy sufferings. Kiss me so intimately, with such a strong and tender embrace, that I shall never abandon thee to thy cruel torments.
I ask but one repose: on thy Heart. I desire but one thing: to share in thy divine Agony. May my soul be intoxicated by thy Blood and be nourished by the bread of thy suffering! Amen.”
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