And going out He went to the Mount of Olives. And when He was come into the Garden of Gethsemane He said to His disciples, 'Pray, lest ye enter into temptation.' And He withdrew from them a stone's cast, and kneeling down He prayed: 'Father, not My will but Thine be done.' And being in an agony, He prayed the longer. And His sweat became as drops of blood, trickling down upon the ground. - Luke 22:39,40,41,42,43
Let us humbly ask our Blessed Saviour to admit us among the chosen disciples who followed Him to Gethsemane. There, casting: off sleep, let us enter into the grotto in which Jesus is prostrate, and contemplate His Agony. What a sad and sorrowful spectacle! The human nature of our Saviour, till then calm and serene, is disturbed, saddened, and afraid at the approach of death; yet death is not for that nature a surprise. For a long time its cruel necessity, the hour in which it would take place, its many mournful circumstances were well known to Him. Then His humanity was not troubled; but now at the supreme moment the storm breaks more relentless and more dreadful than upon any other nature. Whence comes this awful change? From a secret weakness long held under the mask of a hypocritical peace? Blasphemy! Every circumstance in the agony of our dear Master is a prodigy. The exercise of His omnipotence was necessary to open the door of His holy soul to grief at all; and, again, His omnipotence was needed to prevent His death in His unspeakable anguish. It was because He willed it that passions hitherto submissive were agitated and troubled. It was His divine fore-knowledge that placed clearly before Him the living and frightful images of death and sin. It brought before Him in one appalling vision all the evils He was about to endure - the treason of His disciples, the abandonment of those whom He loved, the sacrilegious hatred of the Jewish priests, the injustice of the great, the ingratitude of the people, the despair of His friends, the anguish of His beloved Mother; the insults, injuries, humiliations; the spittle, the scourging, the crown of thorns; the cross and, at last. His death as the most infamous of malefactors. And all these evils for sinners who had loaded past ages with their iniquities! Sins of the mind, of the heart, of the senses; the abominations of idolatry, injustices, violences, debaucheries of pagan races; the prevarications and apostasies of His own people - Jesus saw it all. But the future weighed more heavily upon His dismayed soul than the past. His precious blood would be shed for millions to no purpose; they would ungratefully refuse His grace and would reject His merits.
'And He began to fear and to be sad' (Mark 14). Jesus is seized with a mysterious sadness. His sacrifice seems to be repugnant to Him, and He implores God to spare His life, threatened with so much ingratitude and profanation. We read it in the twenty-ninth Psalm, in which David had already spoken in His name: 'What profit is there in my blood whilst I go down to corruption?' Why shed it if, in a great measure, it is sure to be lost?
'Jesus begins to fear.' His spirit and His flesh, so tenderly and so purely united, protest against the horrors of a cruel and unmerited separation.
'His soul is sorrowful, even unto death.' He falls with His face to the ground; a sweat of blood flows upon it; He is in an agony. He would certainly have expired if He had not been sustained for the bitter death of the cross by divine power.
Oh, what a conflict! Human nature, left for a moment to itself, repels the too bitter chalice which God presents to it. 'O my Father! if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me.' But His human nature is promptly lifted up by the divine nature and abandons itself to the most holy will of its heavenly Father in the words: 'Not My will but Thine be done.'
O most sweet and blessed Jesus! I am not scandalized in Thy agony and dereliction; rather do I see, under the doleful veil of this mystery, Thy sacred divinity, and I offer to it the homage of my faith and adoration. Prostrate in spirit before Thee in the grotto of Gethsemane, I tenderly pity Thee in Thy awful sorrows, and I beg the grace to take part in them. Have I not merited them by my innumerable faults? Is it not to me that this disgust with a sinful life, this fear of the terrors of divine justice, this sadness unto death, properly belong? Be just and severe, O my Jesus! Give me strength to suffer with Thee! How bitter soever Thy chalice may be, grant me grace to submit to it, and accept it as Thou didst accept the holy will of God.
- text taken from Jesus in the Rosary, by Father Jacques-Marie Louis Monsabre, O.P.