Simple Thoughts on the Rosary: Sorrowful Mysteries: The Agony in the Garden
Pain is sweetened by the thought that it will profit those whom we love. Our Lord saw that for a multitude of souls what He was going to suffer would avail nothing; that they would be lost in spite of all He could do to save them. And of those whom His pains would profit, how many were a drop in His bitter chalice! They would be saved indeed, but how poorly. They would not be obdurate, but they would be niggardly. His self-sacrifice and unstinted generosity would awaken in their souls only the very faintest response. Whilst His constant thought in life and in death had been what more He could do for them, their study would be how little they could do for Him compatible with their own salvation.
There was a last drop in that chalice, one that surpassed in bitterness all that had gone before. If Jerusalem had deserted Him—His own people, His priests; if one apostle was about to betray Him, and all to forsake Him; He had still the Father left Him, the Father’s love to make amends for all, the Father’s bosom into which to climb. Who could assail Him there? Who should drive Him thence? Oh mystery the more impenetrable the more we search into it—that when He was making to the Divine Majesty an infinite satisfaction, acceptable and accepted, the Father should forsake—it is His own word—treat as a sinner the Son of His love! Because He was made sin for us, because we had deserved to be abandoned by God, Christ was abandoned, a word we should have never dared to use had He not used it first to reveal to us the darkness that gathered round His human Soul, and caused Him anguish beyond which there was nothing left for Him to bear.
This is what we mean by the Agony in the Garden—the throes that must have wrenched asunder soul and body had He not reserved Himself for the death of the Cross. Our agony, O Lord, is but the faintest shadow of Thine. With us it is the forerunner of death close at hand. Thine brought Thee to the gates of death, and held Thee there till the three hours on Calvary were run.
What drop was mine, my Saviour, in Thy cup of woe, Bringing its brimming bitterness To overflow:
What sin of mine oppressed Thy soul With anguish sore Driving a death-sweat ... and of blood, From every pore?
III.—Thou also art wounded as well as we, Thou art become like unto us.—Isaias xiv.
The sacred Agony reveals a depth of sympathy and brotherly compassion which we should have thought impossible in a God-man. Had we been asked how our Lord would go forth to meet His torments, we should have said: “With the fearlessness He had ever shown in life when danger threatened, with a dauntless, unruffled soul rejoicing like a giant to run the way, desiring with desire to drain to the dregs the bitter chalice He had resolved to drink for love of us.” We should have sent Him into the battle like an earthly captain, animating His followers by His high courage and heroic words. Could we have dreamed of a Leader who, to comfort His terror-stricken soldiers would share their weakness, would be afraid; whose face should blanch, whose voice should tremble as the hour of trial drew on? Could we have brought ourselves to believe that our God would stoop for our sakes to this excess of pitying love? We should have deemed it unworthy of Him. Oh happy was it for us that He had not to take counsel of us! Where should we have gone in our hours of weakness had there been no Gethsemane! What consolation is wanting to us now that we see the mighty God stricken with fear; sickening like us at the sight of failure, treachery, ingratitude; cowering before the anger of God; “with a strong cry and tears offering up prayers and supplications to Him that was able to save Him from death” (Heb. 5).
How practical, how self-forgetting is Christ’s love for us! “All that I can do I will do for them” was His motto through life. And thus when His hour came, it was not what best befitted His Majesty, but what would help us most that determined the way in which He would meet suffering and death. To be like His brethren in all things, this was His rule from first to last: that, having shown Himself like us, He may win us to be like Him, ready to say with Him in the hour of trial: “Abba, Father, all things are possible to Thee, let this chalice pass from me. Nevertheless if this chalice may not pass away but I must drink it, Thy Will be done.”
IV.—My heart is ready.—Ps. lvi.
His hour was come—the hour to which He offered Himself when as a Babe He was presented to His Father in the Temple. The hour of physical torments and of a shameful death, the hour of humiliation and blasphemy, of triumph for His enemies, of agony for His Mother and His friends—that hour had come.
And His hour found Him ready. In the agony of the strife between the flesh and the spirit He sweated blood, for He was truly man. But in spite of repugnance, and darkness, and desolation, He was ready. He stretched out His hands for His chalice: “I do not resist; I have not gone back” (Isaias 50). “My heart is ready, O God, My heart is ready” (Ps. 56).
We offer ourselves to Him in a moment of fervour. “Can you drink the chalice I shall drink?” “We can.” And when the hour comes to prove our fidelity, to watch and pray and suffer with Him, we are found asleep.
“And they knew not what to answer Him.” No indeed, what answer could we make? One only, His own excuse for us: “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” “Strengthen me, O God, in this hour” (Judith 18), is a prayer that should be again and again on our lips in face of a coming trial. Or, better still, our Master’s own words: “If this chalice may not pass away but I must drink it, Thy Will be done.”
“Can you drink of the chalice I shall drink?” He says to us at times. “Would you like to be very near Me in Heaven, to be among My dearest and most intimate friends for ever and ever? Can you drink of my chalice, then? There is no other way. You may creep into a corner of Heaven if you will. But to go up to its first places there must be close companionship with Me here. Can you find it in your heart to say: ‘Give me to drink.’”
Lord, I would be near Thee at any cost. Bid me come to Thee, bid me come close to Thee. With Thy help I will drink of Thy chalice. Thy lips have well nigh drained it. A few drops only Thou hast saved for me, to give me a title to that nearness to Thee that I covet. I will take it from Thy hand: Give me to drink.
V.—Like to us in all things.—Heb. iv.