Episode 1969: The Agony in the Garden: "My Soul is Sorrowful Even Unto Death" - Part 2

The Agony in the Garden: My Soul is Sorrowful Even Unto Death
The Gospels recount a pivotal moment in the life of Christ

The next sentence we are looking at is:

"Then he saith to them: My soul is sorrowful even unto death: stay you here, and watch with me." Matthew 26:38

My head filled with questions after thinking about Jesus saying that His soul is sorrowful even unto death. When Jesus tells his apostles that His soul is sorrowful even unto death, His mind was still human, still trying to please His divine Father, still fighting demons... What else could he possibly be thinking? Was He reflecting all at once on what He had done in His life? His past, present and future all just pressing down on Him? ALL the circumstances that had led up to this moment? The experiences that possessed wickedness, treachery, desertion, injustice?
And lastly, as He would put Himself last, was He letting Himself think of His own soul? His physical and human death? Is He questioning His own life as a man and wondering if He has served His father well? Did He even let Himself think that His father might still save Him as Abraham was allowed to save Isaac?

I started researching Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane and couldn’t believe that I found exactly what I was looking for. St. Padre Pio speaks to what Jesus may have been feeling in the garden in his book The Agony of Jesus - Meditations of Padre Pio. Padre Pio writes:

“And all this does not make Him retreat. As a raging sea this mass inundates Him, enfolds Him, oppresses Him. Behold Him before His Father the God of Justice, facing the full penalty of divine justice. He, the essence of purity, sanctity by nature, in contact with sin, indeed, as if He Himself had become a sinner! Who can fathom the disgust that He feels in His innermost spirit? The horror He feels? The nausea, the contempt He senses so vividly? And having taken all upon Himself, nothing excepted, He is crushed by this immense weight, oppressed, thrown down, prostrated. Exhausted, He groans beneath the weight of Divine Justice, before His Father, Who has permitted His Son to offer Himself as a Victim for sin, as one accursed."

Padre Pio asks the hard question, “Who can fathom?” The answer is, no one can.
Padre Pio makes my words seem so weak, doesn’t he?

I need to repeat part of the quote because his words are the closest I found to what Jesus may have been feeling, “And having taken all upon Himself, nothing excepted, He is crushed by this immense weight, oppressed, thrown down, prostrated. Exhausted, He groans beneath the weight of Divine Justice…”

C.S. Lewis wrote in Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer, a meditation on Gethsemane and the suffering of Jesus. He says that this torrent of feelings, emotions, anxieties “were at the last moment lost upon Him.” Imagine the dam bursting and an unimaginable and uncontrollable flood just drowns you in fear and horror. You are with your friends and in the presence of your father but you are still completely alone. We can relate to the human Jesus (well, we can try as much as possible) but it is totally impossible for us to understand His soul and His love for God and for us.

Think of yourself. If you have ever found yourself in a dire situation, so dire that you feel that all is lost, YOU’RE lost, things are hopeless. Okay, now how much can each one of us take when we are faced with situations like this? We can’t. We lament and we ask God, “Why me?” Then we need time to process, time to think, time to feel sorry for ourselves, time to get angry, time to rationalize, time to heal, we need to be surrounded by our family and friends because they will help get us through.

How much time did Jesus get? His death was imminent, and He knew the pain and agony that He must suffer; He felt, as Padre Pio said, the oppression, the weight, the exhaustion, everything all at once. He just took it. He took it for us. The ones who would continue to let Him down, over and over again. I’m sure that is what crushed Him more than anything.

“...stay you here and watch with me.” We can certainly understand how Jesus would say this to His friends. I would want the same thing in my hour of need. Isn’t that what we pray to the Blessed Mother when we say the Litany of Our Lady of Perpetual Help? “When my friends and relations, surrounding my bed, moved with compassion, shall invoke thy clemency on my behalf.” We want people there for us, praying with us and for us, so that we may be shown mercy.

Jesus knew His friends couldn’t comprehend what he was going through, but he was still asking them to “stay and watch;” to continue to love Him and pray and be witness to what was about to happen.

CS Lewis said in reference to Jesus’ suffering in the garden, “First, the prayer of anguish; not granted. Then He turns to His friends. They are asleep - as ours, or we, are so often, or busy, or away, or preoccupied.” Oh, how often do we feel this way? Our own prayers are unanswered by God (or at least not answered the way we want them to be answered); we turn to our friends and loved ones and they aren’t even there for us. The Lord reached out to his friends as His life on this earth was coming to an end and they weren’t there for Him.

Lewis also says, “We all try to accept with some sort of submission our afflictions when they actually arrive. But the prayer in Gethsemane shows that the preceding anxiety is equally God’s will and equally part of our human destiny. The perfect Man experienced it. And the servant is not greater than the master.”

If the perfect Man struggled with God’s will, then it is to be expected that we who are imperfect will struggle even more. Yet in desperation I’m sure we will pray to God for help because we are His servants and we believe we should be saved. What have we done that deserves our being saved? Especially when we have the nerve to sometimes doubt His love for us and even think He abandons us in our worst times of need?

As I bring this to an end please bear with me because I found so many quotes for reflection to help remind us that it is never too late, especially in this season of Lent, to pray, to repent and to know, love and serve God by remembering Jesus and what He did for us.

G.K. Chesterson said, “That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already, but that God could have His back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents forever….for the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point -- and does not break.”

Jesus’ soul passed a breaking point – and did not break.”

Jesus did all that He was asked to do by his father, He did it alone and He did it for us. Chapter 2 of Corinthians verse 5 says, “Him who knew no sin God made to be sin on our behalf.”
Jesus who knew no sin God made to be sin on our behalf.

So as we prepare for the Resurrection of our Lord, keep this gospel sentence with you: "My soul is sorrowful even unto death: stay you here, and watch with me." No, we cannot fathom the sorrow in His soul. But do we have what it takes to stay and watch with Him?

Thank you for listening.