Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.” Matthew 26.36
On that first Palm Sunday in Jerusalem the air was filled with excitement and anticipation as Jesus descended the Mount of Olives riding on the donkey towards the city.
Jesus’ purpose in arriving in this manner was to fulfil the ancient prophesy of Zechariah which said, ‘Behold your king is coming to you Sion humble and riding on a donkey- a beast of burden’. His action was a sign of the humble Messiah of God, who would rule with loving-kindness and gentleness – not that of earthly rulers of any age who come with oppressive power and violence.
It was time of the annual Passover so there were crowds of people in the city at that time. Many would have understood the significance of the prophet from Nazareth coming to redeem the people from their enemies. More than that Jesus comes as the embodiment of the hope of all humanity.
A week later on the following Sunday evening two of Jesus’ disciples were on their way to Emmaus. They described, to the stranger who joined them on the road, all that had come to pass. They told him, ‘We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened.’ We sense their feelings of deep disappointment.
Yet it is in these coming ‘three days’, the Great Triduum, we celebrate God in Christ overcoming all the works of the Evil One in every age.
During Holy Week we are called as the Church to be more than mere observers of these things. Through Word and Sacrament, through our faithful watching and prayer, we become participators in the suffering and death of Jesus Christ and to know the power of his resurrection and so are made partakers of his divine nature.
Our participation is a performative and transformative experience – a continuing spiritual experience of growing in repentance and faith. Therein we discover the truth about ourselves that ‘The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.’
How weak indeed we all are and how slow to acknowledge our weaknesses in the flesh!
How much we are in need of that special grace of the Holy Spirit of God in the Church today! How much we all need to, ‘Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord’. [ Hebrews.12.14]
On that first Maundy Thursday evening, after the Passover meal and the prayers Jesus led the eleven disciples to the place called Gethsemane to pray. St. John describes Gethsemane as garden where Jesus often met with his disciples and was it known to Judas. ‘Gethsemane’ means ‘oil press’ where the olives were crushed for their oil – an name not without significance when considering the pressures Jesus is about to undergo – something he was fully aware of in his spirit.
As for the disciples there was a growing sense foreboding and fatigue as they followed their master into the Garden. There the Passover moon cast the shadows amongst the olive trees. Then he says to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even unto death; remain here, and watch with me.”
What is this sorrow of Jesus? Sorrow that Judas has now betrayed him to the authorities. Sorrow in that the eleven will shortly desert him as he is arrested. Sorrow that his own people will violently reject him and condemned to him death. Sorrow that Simon Peter will deny knowing him.
As ‘the man of sorrows acquainted with grief’ Jesus knows that Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. For all have sinned and grieved the heart of God.
Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, of Blessed Memory, in his little book , The Orthodox Way writes: Full weight must be given to Christ’s words at Gethsemane “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death’ Jesus enters at this moment totally into the experience of spiritual death. He is at this moment identifying himself with all the despair and mental pain of humanity, and this identification is far more important to us than his participation in our physical pain.
Jesus experiences, in the words of William Law [the c18th Anglican Divine] ‘the anguishing terror of a lost soul….the reality of eternal death.’
Yet although ‘Christ fears death, says St. John Climicus ‘he does not show terror, in order to demonstrate clearly the property of His two natures.’
And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”
St. Matthew tells that Jesus prays three times to the Father as the cup of suffering and death is presented to him. My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.Everything human in him resists the appalling destructiveness that now is close at hand.
The second and third time Jesus then prays, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” The words are those of the Son of God, who willingly accepts his Father’s will and abandons himself to accepting in total obedience of faith, trusting in God to save him. So to Jesus, we look as the founder and perfecter of our faith, [Hebrews 12].
A present day writer says, ‘the transition between the two wills from opposition to union is accomplished through the sacrifice of obedience. In Gethsemane this transition takes place.’
In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus freely takes upon himself of our sin and death. By his obedience of faith in God Jesus reverses Adam’s rebellion and disobedience against God in the Garden of Eden. In Gethsemane Jesus set us free from the power of Satan, sin and death and restores us to union with the loving and saving purposes of our heavenly Father.
O generous love! that he who smote
in man for man the foe,
the double agony in Man
for man should undergo.
And in the garden secretly,
and on the cross on high,
should teach his brethren, and inspire
to suffer and to die.
Father Andrew