Lenten Retreat (Gethsemane) - Second Meditation (Prayer in the Garden)

FIRST POINT: The great sorrow of Christ

PRESENTATION

Permission

As we come to console your most sorrowful heart in your hour of agony.

As we saw in our first meditation this morning, Our Blessed Lord suffered immense sorrow while He prayed in the Garden; indeed, He says:

My soul is sorrowful even unto death.

Put more plainly, had any normal man experienced the profound sorrow that Our Lord suffered in the Garden, he would have died from the grief itself. But Our Lord’s suffering in the Garden was much greater than we could ever possibly imagine or experience, with His sacred humanity sustained by His divinity.

Why was Our Lord so sorrowful? The saints and spiritual writers give us three principal causes for His immense suffering in the garden. The first cause was to see arrayed before Him at a glance all the tortures and intolerable pains, all the contumely and insults, which He was to endure during the time of His approaching passion and death on the cross. Thus, finding Himself deprived of all consolation, His soul was seized with unutterable horror at the ocean of anguish which assailed it.

When you see Your Blessed Lord plunged in such bitter grief for love of you, will you not compassionate Him with true love and tenderness? Will you not thank Him for the inward sadness and affliction which for your sake He suffers, and let not those interior trials which sometimes afflict you in His service seem to you too heavy to be borne.

ILLUSTRATION

After the first Christian missionaries arrived in Japan, the natives were told for the first time about the greatness and power and perfection of God. A feeling of awe came over them, and this was only increased when they heard that this great God was always near them and even in their very souls.

When the missionaries told them of the fall of our first parents and of the infinite goodness of God in sending His own Divine Son to redeem them, their astonishment knew no bounds.

And when at length they began to tell them how Jesus was born in a stable and that He suffered and died on the cross for us, they all cried out: “Oh, how loving! Oh, how good must the God of the Christians be!”

“More than that, my brethren,” continued the missionary Fathers, “God give us a commandment that we must love Him with our whole hearts and threatens us with terrible punishments if we refuse.”

“Oh, surely that was not necessary,” cried out one of the people — “surely, since He was so good to them, they could not but love Him and think it the greatest honour to be allowed to do so. Surely the Christians must always be at the foot of the altar of their God, all penetrated with thanksgiving, all inflamed with love!”

“Ah, would to God that this were true!” said the missionary, “but it is far from being the case. There are Christians who not only will not love God but who even spend their lives in offending Him.”

Then the poor natives were filled with an indignation that they could not control. “Oh, who ever heard of such ingratitude! Oh, hard-hearted barbarians!” they exclaimed. “In what part of the world do these wretched me live, for they ought to be all destroyed from the face of the earth and not allowed to live!”

SECOND POINT: The enormity of sin

PRESENTATION

While the thought of the immense pain and suffering that He was to endure would be sufficient to cause great anguish in the heart of any mortal man, this was only the first cause of Our Lord’s sufferings that night in Gethsemane.

As He continued to pray, He endured the affliction of seeing clearly the enormity of the offences committed by men against His divine Father. As His love for His divine Father was unbounded, so likewise was the grief He suffered at beholding Him offended by us, especially since He, Who had made Himself our surety, was afflicted and grieved at our sins as if they had been His own. It was His divine will that this interior agony and affliction should be in proportion to the number and gravity of the sins of every kind, by which God was so grievously offended by mankind, and that all should behold in Him One who would adequately atone and grieve for so much wickedness.

You can never sufficiently detest your own sins because you can never truly know the depths of their malice. You must learn from Our Blessed Lord to sorrow and grieve over them as you should, and in expiation for them, offer your imperfect sorrow in union with the grief of your sorrowful Redeemer.

ILLUSTRATION

When St. Alphonsus was about twelve years of age, he was placed by his parents under the care of the Fathers of St. Jerome for his education.

It was the custom in their college for the young students to go into the country once every week for amusements. On one occasion, Alphonsus was asked to join them in a certain game, but he tried to excuse himself, saying that he did not know how to play it. His companions, however, urged him so much that, at length, he consented, and so great was his success that he won thirty times.

This made his comrades jealous, and one of them, older than himself, exclaimed in great anger: “So it was you who pretended not to know the game, was it?” Adding at the same time a very improper word. When Alphonsus heard it, he cast on him a look of great severity and said: “How is this? Shall God be offended all for a few miserable pence? Take back your money.”

Saying this, he threw down at his feet the money he had gained, and, turning away from his companions with a holy indignation, he went by himself to another part of the woods.

But this was not all; for when evening came, and it was time to return home, Alphonsus could nowhere be found. They called on him but received no answer, and as darkness was beginning to set in, everyone went to seek for him. What was their surprise when they discovered him on his knees before a picture of the Blessed Virgin, which he had with him, and which he had placed on a branch of a tree. He was so absorbed in God that it was some time before he came to himself, notwithstanding the noise that his companions made.

What a beautiful example for your imitation. Look on sin as the greatest evil that is in the world since it displeases God, and like St. Alphonsus, flee from the very appearance of it. For it is an act of the greatest ingratitude to offend God, Who has done us so much good.

THIRD POINT: Rejection of God and Lukewarmness

PRESENTATION

Our Lord is still praying in the Garden. His immense sorrow beholding all of the tortures and ignominy that He would suffer at the hands of wicked men the following day has only been compounded by the thought of all of the sins and offences against the Heavenly Father that mankind would commit, not just those that had already taken place, but all those that were yet to come, your sins, my sins, the sins of all people throughout salvation history.

Were any of us in His place, that would be more than sufficient to plunge us into the greatest sorrow from which we would never be lifted, but there is a third reason for Our Blessed Lord’s sufferings which we have yet to explore.

For all of us gathered here, it is, I think, safe to say that while we continue to offend God by our sins, yet, we still desire His grace and salvation, but this is not so for all of humanity. The third cause of the sadness of Our Blessed Lord is the sight of all the vast multitude of men for whom His passion and death would be useless by reason of their malice and wickedness. He also beheld the large number of those for whom it would be less efficacious and fruitful because of their tepidity in corresponding to the helps and graces which He merited for us. This grief and affliction was all pure suffering for Him because it was unattended by the consolation of any good either for the glory of His Heavenly Father or for our welfare.

To what extent have you added to the agony of Christ by your ingratitude and lukewarmness? Is it possible that instead of sharing the grief of Jesus and the sufferings He bore for you in the garden, you rather increase them by your sinful and careless way of life? As then you have added to the interior affliction of Jesus by your faults, even so, you can give Him some relief by a fervent life and thus render the merits of His most sacred passion more fruitful to your own soul.

ILLUSTRATION

One day when St. Francis de Sales was hearing Confessions, a man came to his Confessional and accused himself of many grievous sins without showing any signs of sorrow. The Saint began to weep and continued shedding abundant tears till the man finished his Confession. When it was done, he asked the Saint why he wept so much.

“My child,” he said, “I weep because you do not weep. You have, by your great sins, crucified the Son of God, and you seem to have no sorrow for what you have done.”

These few words touched the sinner’s heart, and he also began to weep. God showed him at that moment the greatness of his sins, and he became a sincere penitent.

Another example:

One night St. Alphonsus Rodriguez was weeping bitterly at the remembrance of how often he had offended God. In the midst of his tears, he saw before him Our Divine Lord Himself, accompanied by twelve Saints, one of whom was St. Francis of Assisi.

St. Francis said to him: “My brother, why are you weeping?”

“O dear Saint,” replied Alphonsus, “if one venial sin displeases God so much that a whole life spent in weeping for it would not be sufficient to make reparation to God for it, how great should be my grief—I who have sinned so much?”

At these words, Jesus looked on him with great affection as if to tell him how acceptable to Him were these tears, and the vision disappeared.

From that moment, Alphonsus grew daily more fervent and never ceased to grieve for the venial faults by which he had offended God.

And you have perhaps offended God by greater sins than ever that holy man committed, and how many tears have you shed for them? Be sorry from your inmost heart, not only for the grievous sins you have committed, but even the smallest sin by which you have offended your Heavenly Father.

CONCLUSION

As we sit with Our Blessed Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane, we witness His immense sorrow and suffering, a sorrow so great that any other man would have died from grief, a grief caused not only by the prospect of suffering and rejection that He was about to undergo, but caused also by the sins of all mankind, the offences against the Heavenly Father who loves us so generously that He sent His only Son to suffer and die for our redemption. It is a grief that is also caused by the wickedness of those who would reject His saving sacrifice and the coldness of those who, even though they experienced God's mercy, would continue to offend Him by their tepidity and superficial sorrow for sins.

As we make our Lenten journey this year and beyond, we must keep the sorrow of Christ before our eyes. So often, we fail to recognize both the immensity of our offences against God, but also the need to console the Sacred Heart of Our Blessed Lord by our prayers, sacrifices, and good works and by avoiding every occasion of sin.

As we sit with Christ in the Garden, may we no longer be the cause of His sorrow, but may we be the source of His consolation in that dark hour.