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Meditating on the Agony in the Garden, the First Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary, is always a source of great spiritual fruit for me.
We see Jesus alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, facing His imminent Passion and death, praying that this cup of suffering pass Him by.
Jesus is so anxious and distressed that He sweats drops of blood, struggling to surrender to the will of the Father and the mystery of the cross.
Radical filial obedience wins out, as Jesus utters His fiat, “Let your will be done, not mine.”
When Christ arises from this prayer, He moves forward with determination, arousing the sleeping apostles, facing Judas and the approaching mob, ready and willing to drink the cup of suffering to the very dregs.
In the Gospel passion narratives, once Jesus has made His surrender in Gethsemane, He embraces the terrible details of His trial, torture, and death with a peace, acceptance, and love that is truly divine.
The false testimony, the brutal scourging, the malicious mockery, the exhausting climb up Golgotha, the nails and the crown of thorns, the thirst, and the pain could not destroy the love, obedience, and goodness of Christ.
None of it could ultimately “get” to Him, because He had gone to that deep place of peace in His own heart, that place of perfect union with the Father.
Surrender and salvation
Could we not say that our salvation began to be won for us when Christ surrendered His will and heart in the garden before He arrived at Golgotha?
Virtue and sin, love and hate, faith and disbelief all begin in our will before they are expressed in action or lived outside of our thoughts and desires.
We are first inspired within to be virtuous or tempted within to sin before we ever act on those impulses or thoughts.
The spiritual battle is won or lost within our hearts.
That is why Jesus says, “What comes out of a person, that is what defiles. From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile.” Mark 7: 20-23
Two absolutely essential moments in the Gospel are the Annunciation and the Agony in the Garden.
In both, an individual is alone, facing a choice which seems humanly overwhelming, if not impossible.
Mary contemplates God’s invitation to be the mother of Christ and Jesus confronts the terror of the crucifixion.
Both lay aside fear, anxiety, and self-seeking, making themselves completely available to the will of the Father with an absolute offering of self which still astonishes us.
Through Mary’s assent, the Word becomes flesh, and through Jesus’ surrender, our salvation is preciously purchased with His Blood.
These mysteries we regularly meditate upon in the liturgy, the Rosary, and the Scriptures powerfully speak to us of our own need to hand our lives over to the gracious will of God.
We struggle to accept the circumstances and difficulties which life invariably hands us. We resist pain, suffering, and tragedy. We hold close our loved ones and never want anything bad to happen to them.
This resistance to the cross is human and normal; even Jesus struggled with it. But our Christian faith calls us beyond the merely human reaction to suffering.
Our faith conviction that “all things work for good who love God” (Romans 8:28) invites us to daily surrender our will to the Lord, to go against our own preferences when it serves another, to reject the need to control everything and everybody, to accept whatever befalls us with peace and equanimity.
Difficulty in practice
Such gracious surrender is so extremely difficult to put into practice.
My day can be going great and then one nasty letter, an unexpected emergency, or sudden brush with the cross can upset my tranquility of mind and joy of heart.
I realize anew my own weakness every time I lose my peace because of some external disturbance.
Like Jesus in Gethsemane, we are invited to go so deeply into the Father’s heart, to dwell so profoundly in His love and peace, that we can remain steadfast and even joyful in the face of adversity.
Jean Pierre de Caussade, a French Jesuit priest of the 17th century, penned a series of spiritual direction letters to a group of nuns, compiled into a book called Abandonment to Divine Providence.
This book is my spiritual wilderness survival guide!
Father Caussade teaches that every event in our lives is willed or at least allowed by God. (Here we get into deep theological questions. Does God will bad things to happen to us? Our faith would reject such an idea, but God mysteriously allows suffering in order to lead us to Him.)
If all the details of our lives, the good, bad, and ugly, can ultimately make us saints and lead us to Heaven, then why do we fight for our will and control so much? Why do we resist the cross when we know it is the only ladder which takes us to eternal life?
Father Caussade has much to teach us as we make our pilgrim journey through this Lent, knowing that we will end on Holy Thursday night with Jesus in Gethsemane.
In my next column, I want to reflect more on the wisdom of Abandonment to Divine Providence.