The Gethsemane Struggle of Jesus Christ

All that we have seen and heard until now has been only a preparation for the great struggle of the cross that lay before the Son of Man. Now there will open before us the very field of His sufferings—unique, unparalleled, divine—opening in the most extraordinary manner: not through the shameful betrayal of the Teacher into His enemies’ hands by a treacherous disciple, but through the exalted self-surrender of the Son of God into the hands of heaven’s justice, which punishes in His person all the wrongs of the earth. After so peaceful and serene a state as the God-man had been in while conversing with His disciples, after the solemn words: «Now the Son of Man is glorified! Let them all be one, just as We are!» — one might have expected that this self-surrender, weighty as it was, would come to pass without struggle or shaking, still less with cries and bloody sweat. But we shall see the opposite: we shall behold the Son of Man, as it were, finally bowing beneath the weight of His own greatness, humbly renouncing all the powers by which He could act, renouncing, it would seem, the very field of action itself; we shall behold Jesus, three times casting Himself upon the ground in prayer that, if possible, that very cup might pass from Him which He had resolved, «before the foundation of the world» (1 Pet 1:20), to drink to the very last drop for the salvation of perishing mankind!.. A spectacle astonishing, standing in striking contrast to the rest of the Son of Man’s acts, and therefore wholly incomprehensible to those who would insist on stopping at the letter of the event, which visibly kills (2 Cor 3:6), and on understanding it in isolation, without reference to the whole mystery of redemption, to the entire plan of man’s salvation—but a spectacle exceedingly moving, instructive, and majestic for one who knows how to place himself in the proper posture of a reverent onlooker, and who will look upon the praying Redeemer of mankind not with the eyes of a Jewish spy, so to speak, peering from behind a tree in the garden of Gethsemane, as has, alas, more than once happened, but from the God-lit heights of Tabor and Olivet, with the eyes of the evangelists and apostles of Christ—that is, with the eyes of faith and truth.

Viewed from the true standpoint, the struggle we are considering at Gethsemane not only contains no contradiction to the divine character of the Savior of mankind and of His ministry, but belongs to it as a necessary part—indeed, the weightiest part—of the whole. To be persuaded of this, there is no need to resort to any arbitrary dogmatic assumptions; one need only enter into the very character of the God-man’s person and ministry as Head and Savior of the human race, as Redeemer and Reconciler of the whole world, as Leader and Pattern of all who are tempted and saved. In this respect, by St. Paul’s profound observation (Heb 11:10), it was fitting for the Redeemer of mankind to endure all things and «to be tempted in every respect». But the temptations to which the human race is subject naturally reduce to two kinds: temptation by pleasure, and temptation by suffering. The first temptation, in all three of its principal forms, the Son of Man passed through at the very beginning of His ministry, when in the wilderness, after a forty-day fast, He was tempted by the devil. The second, heavier temptation, by suffering, now lay before Him. So that its full force and fury might be exhausted upon the universal Victim, it was divided, so to speak, by divine justice into two stages: the Gethsemane stage and the Golgotha stage. At Golgotha the Son of Man met a cross more outward, dreadful in itself and surrounded by every outward horror, but open to the gaze of all, even of Jesus’s own enemies, and therefore borne with a visible majesty befitting the Lamb of God upon the very altar—a cross that did not disclose those sides of temptation and suffering whose endurance, bound up as it was with the expression of human weakness, could not be shown to the impure gaze of any and all. And it is this inward cross—or more precisely, this most hidden, and perhaps most agonizing, half of the cross—that meets the divine Cross-bearer in the solitude of the garden of Gethsemane, and falls upon Him with its whole weight, so far as to force Him to bow to the ground and cry out: «If it is possible, let this cup pass!» At Golgotha, the suffering body will bring the spirit to suffering; here, the suffering spirit will make the most pure body sweat drops of blood. Hidden from impure human eyes, the Son of Man will here, as it were, strip Himself entirely of every supernatural power, remaining with a human will alone, and, armed only with prayer and surrender to the Father’s will, will go forth, as a second Adam, to do battle with the heaviest of temptations.

How did this temptation take shape? The evangelists, following their manner of simple narration, do not lift the veil that covered the Holy of Holies of Jesus’s soul in these decisive moments, content to hand down the few brief words that were heard from Him, and that we shall hear in the account of the struggle itself. From these words, however, it is clear that the substance of the inward temptation and struggle lay in the perception of the extreme difficulty of drinking the cup of the coming sorrows and pains; in the certainty that, in the depths of God’s wisdom and omnipotence, there was a means to carry the cup past Him—if not forever, then at least this time—that is, either to postpone the dreadful hour of suffering, or to lessen its fierceness; and, finally, in the strong, natural desire arising from all this, that it might indeed be so.

What, then, was in this dreadful cup, that made it so unbearable and crushing, in these very moments, even for the Author of salvation Himself? Ordinary, natural fear of torment and death? So many have thought, and think still, but without solid ground. It is true that torments are a great trial for any human flesh; nor is it to be denied that the torments must have been unspeakably heavier for the most pure flesh of the Redeemer of mankind, which, being untouched by sin and the disorders arising from it, and moreover united by nature with the Word itself from all eternity, and therefore drawing from it the full perfection of bodily being, would naturally have recoiled with especial force from every violence and torment, and would have been a hundredfold more sensitive to suffering. But, on the other hand, did not many of Christ’s followers go to the cruelest torments with joy, and bear them cheerfully? Could courage really have been lacking, for the endurance of bodily suffering, in Him from whom all other sufferers drew their own courage? And what matters most in the present case: who has said that the God-man grieves unto death in the garden of Gethsemane precisely from fear of torment and death alone, and «not of something else, greater»? The Sufferer Himself does not say this: He prays only: «let this cup pass» (Mt 26:39), «and this hour» (Mk 14:35)—expressions that signify, in general, everything tormenting and dreadful. In what, then, did this tormenting, dreadful thing precisely consist? If ordinary fear of torment and death cannot be excluded from it, neither can it be confined to that fear alone, if only because the cross of Jesus was not merely the cross of a Teacher of truth, dying for the faithfulness of His teaching; not merely the cross of a persecuted Righteous One, dying in the sweet consciousness of His own innocence—but the cross of Him who, not in word only but in deed, took upon Himself all the sins of the human race, who became, not in name but in fact, the object of heaven’s wrath for our sake, the very curse of the law (Gal 3:13). In this sense—for the truth of which both the spirit and the letter of the whole of Scripture stand surety—the sufferings and death of the Son of God were sufferings and death incomparable in their weight and gravity to any other, and therefore the most tormenting, the hardest, for Him above all. This was, without any exaggeration, the concentration of all the sufferings and all the deaths of all mankind. The sufferings of conscience alone—for the most part entirely forgotten when we reflect on the sufferings of the Son of God—must carry within them the fierceness of the torments of hell. For if the coarsest of men often grows faint from the torment of an awakened conscience, tormented by the mere picture of his own sinful life, what torment must it have been for the most pure soul of the God-man, when it beheld itself, in its own consciousness, covered with the sins of the whole world, and, in that state, with the whole weight of them, had to go to redeem them by its own blood upon the cross?.. This very thing—that the cup of the suffering and death now before Him was mixed, filled to the brim with human sins, with the law’s curse, and with heaven’s wrath—was what made it so dreadful and tormenting. Only in this light (and it is not our own invention, but is taken from the Old and New Testaments — Is 53:5-6; 1 Pet 2:24; Gal 3:13) did this cup, we make bold to say, deserve, on appearing before the eyes of the God-man, to turn Him—even Him—from justice to divine mercy.

But here a fresh perplexity may meet someone. «However great, bitter, and tormenting the cup of suffering may be, since the Son of Man was born, and came, for the very purpose of drinking it, how then can He now pray for His own deliverance from it? Is this not a sign of weakness incompatible with so great a calling? Would it not have been better had He accepted this cup with the same courage with which He would afterward deliver Himself into His enemies’ hands?» — No, not better; not in the least better… For Him who had to endure everything to the very last extremity, or, in the apostle’s words, «to be tempted in every respect», it was for that very reason fitting to pass through the temptation of suffering in its most extreme form, to draw near to the last limits of human weakness, and to experience it fully. But could it be said that this was the last limit of temptation, if the Son of Man had at once accepted the dreadful cup of outward and inward suffering without a struggle? On the contrary, one might then more readily suppose the opposite—that it was not dreadful to Him at all, and that its acceptance cost Him no great effort.

It may more reasonably be asked how, in this hour, courage forsook Jesus’s soul. How could He be brought down to the measure of the lowliest sufferer? For some understanding of this sacred mystery, besides the dreadful nature of the very cup of suffering now set before Him, one must suppose a particular ordinance of divine wisdom and justice, which brought the Son of Man into such a state that the weakness of human nature was disclosed in Him just so far as it could be disclosed without loss of moral purity and dignity.

In what did this mysterious ordinance consist? First, no doubt, and above all, in the hiding of the Godhead from the manhood, in leaving the latter to act by its own strength alone. We shall hear how, on the cross, the divine Sufferer will cry out in prayer: «My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me!» That a like forsaking existed now too is attested by the words: «not My will, but Yours, be done! The Son, who is in the Father’s bosom,» would not have spoken thus to the Father; for They «are one»; so could only the Son of Man speak. The strengthening angel bears witness to it too: no angel would have appeared, had not the Father withdrawn. But since the human nature in the Son of Man was, in itself, so pure, so holy, and therefore so strong for every good thing, so courageous against every evil, that in «its natural state» it could easily, of itself, have won the victory over the present temptation without a long and hard struggle, the length and fierceness of this struggle compels us to suppose that, according to His human nature too, the great Author of our salvation was, in the course of the present struggle, by a secret pre-ordination of heavenly justice, led out of His natural, exalted state, brought down into a lower state, brought level with the position of the very least of tempted men. In what manner? This is the mystery of Providence!.. Yet we shall not go beyond the bounds of the Gospel’s own hints if we say that, to weigh down this inward cross, to intensify this inward fire of temptation, it was, in all likelihood, permitted to act—as a servant (though he imagined himself a master)—even to the prince of this world, just as he once acted in the testing of Job’s virtue (Job 2:6). For did we not hear, at the end of the supper, the divine Sufferer say: «The prince of this world is coming» — and after this, one might say, go straight to meet him? Where should this mysterious encounter take place, if not here, in Gethsemane, and how could it find a more glorious expression than in this very struggle?

The Redeemer of mankind, as we have already noted, came—or rather, was brought—in this struggle to the last degree of exhaustion, not of body only, but of soul; in Him the whole weakness of human nature was permitted to show itself; and yet how purely, how holily it showed itself! How far removed from Him was everything capable of degrading the character of mankind’s Savior! We see in Him neither fiery enthusiasm, nor cold, stern courage in accepting and taking up the cup of suffering, but neither do we see faint-hearted refusal, still less murmuring against His lot. The weakness of the flesh cries out: «If it is possible, let this cup pass!» — but the devotion of the spirit to the will of God constantly repeats: «Yet not My will, but Yours, be done!» Can the weakness of the flesh be joined more closely, more sacredly, to the strength of the spirit? Is this not the height of human perfection in a state of the utmost trial? «Nowhere,» blessed Augustine confesses, «do the greatness and holiness of Jesus strike me so much as here, where so many are horrified and perplexed. I would not have known the full greatness of His benefits, had He not shown me before what they cost Him. He experienced my sorrow, that He might grant me His joy. I say boldly: ’sorrow’; for I preach ’the cross.’ There had to be struggle and pain: otherwise there would have been no victory. Insensibility is always lower than self-denial; Jesus wished to teach us how to conquer the fear of death. Indeed, had we not beheld our Savior in the garden of Gethsemane, we might have thought that suffering cost Him nothing, or next to nothing; that the Godhead united to Him made Him incapable of suffering. Then every counsel to imitate Him would necessarily have lost the force it now has: the example of one «incapable of suffering» would have been too far above us, who can suffer. But now we see the drops of bloody sweat, we hear the cries: «let this cup pass»; we know how bitter it is—and we stand in awe of Him who drank it for us. Should temptation befall us too, we will not burn ’within’ while seeming cold ’without’; we will not bless our lot with our tongue while our heart curses the day of its birth; no, we will leave this pretended insensibility, this unnatural double-heartedness, to the followers of some Zeno; we will stand before the image of the praying Jesus, look upon the cup descending from above, fall prostrate before the Heavenly Father, and say, in the words of the Only-begotten: «let this cup, too, pass from us; yet not as we will, but as You will: let Your will be done!» The Father will recognize the Son’s language, if our hearts do not betray that language; He will hear our prayer, as He heard the prayer of the Only-begotten; and the quiet of conscience, the stillness of the heart, will be for us in the place of a strengthening angel.»

With such eyes did St. Paul, too, teach us to look upon Jesus’s suffering in the garden of Gethsemane, when, for the comfort of suffering Christians, he wrote that we do not have a High Priest unable to suffer with us in our weaknesses, but One who, like us, has been tried in every respect, apart from sin (Heb 4:15). This God-enlightened teacher of truth did not hesitate to call Jesus Christ’s Gethsemane suffering the «completion» of all His sufferings before and after, a struggle in which it was decisively shown that the Son of Mary is worthy to be the Leader of salvation for the sons of Adam—a «proof», after which nothing remained to be added to the perfection of our Author of salvation. It remained only for Him Himself, as High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, to enter the Holy of Holies, and begin His eternal offering for the sins of the human race.

Fortified by these thoughts, let us venture now to follow the holy company of Jesus into the garden of Gethsemane, to be witnesses of the greatest struggle of the Son of Man—His divine, one might almost say, self-crucifixion.

After the labors of a whole day, after a long discourse with the disciples and a journey, not brief, from the paschal upper room to Gethsemane, before the onset of dreadful sufferings some rest was altogether necessary for Jesus. The garden of Gethsemane was, it seems, well suited for this very purpose, and chosen for it. But it was not rest, but suffering, that awaited the Son of Man here. Not yet betrayed to His enemies, in the midst of His own disciples and friends, He had to endure what the annals of human suffering offer no example of…

The sweetest inward peace, from which Jesus’s own gentle conversation with His disciples had flowed of itself, suddenly vanished; the bright and comforting visions of the Kingdom of God, with which His most holy soul had constantly been filled, grew dim; His imagination was drawn into a realm of gloom and dread; Jesus began to grieve and to be sorrowful!.. Perhaps outward causes too (the exhaustion of bodily strength, the night journey across the valley of the Kidron, and the like) played some part in bringing on this dejection of spirit; but its chief source lay hidden in Jesus’s own spirit—in those thoughts and feelings which we, guided by the evangelists and the Fathers of the Church, have tried, as far as possible, to uncover in the reflection above. By a secret ordinance of Providence, these thoughts and feelings were now permitted to trouble the mind and heart of the divine Sufferer to such a degree that He, in His utmost humility, seemed this time to find in Himself not strength enough to go out upon the lofty field of the cross with the majesty and courage befitting «the Mediator between God and men». A state most sorrowful for Him who came to earth to do the Father’s will always, who knew without doubt that, by that very will, He must shed His blood on Golgotha for the sins of mankind, and who was certain that the time appointed for offering that sacrifice had now indeed arrived!..

Finding no strength within Himself to calm His spirit, Jesus turned in prayer to the Father. Once, during such prayer, His face had shone with light on Tabor (Lk 9:29); by prayer, His spirit, now troubled with fear of the cross, was to be made bright again.

Having told the disciples (no more than they needed to know) to remain in a certain place (Mt 26:36) and wait for Him while He prayed, Jesus went farther into the depths of the garden, inviting Peter, James, and John to follow Him. Having seen His glory on Tabor, these disciples were the more fit among the others to see also His humiliation in Gethsemane. Meanwhile, the nearness of three pure souls could serve as some comfort to Him who, out of love for mankind, was going to the cross. Their prayer would have been a still greater comfort, could they have prayed as their Teacher did.

The Lord laid open His whole heart before the disciples. «My soul,—He said—is sorrowful to the point of death! Stay here, watch with Me, and pray!..» Such language was altogether new and unexpected to the disciples, who were accustomed to seeing their Teacher always at peace and of good cheer. Yet, not grasping in their minds the full weight of the present moment, they could not feel the full need for prayer either; they took up this holy task, but in such a way that the God-man soon sensed that even this small company did not answer to the state of His spirit, and, leaving the disciples, withdrew into the thicket of the trees, about a stone’s throw away (not so far that the disciples, by the light of the moon, could not see Him). It was in this very solitude that the fate of mankind was finally to be decided—how it was to be saved from sin and death: in the present way, that is, by the God-man’s death on the cross, or by other, unknown paths, hidden in the depths of God’s wisdom; and whether at this very time the mystery of our redemption would be accomplished, or at some other, later time.

Despite the prayerful disposition of Jesus’s spirit, sorrow and distress grew stronger and stronger. To the multitude of tormenting feelings and thoughts that arose in His soul at the sight, before His mind’s eye, of the dreadful cup of God’s wrath, of human sins, and of the curse and torment that follow them, there was added, to complete the temptation, the vivid, inescapable thought that in the depths of God’s wisdom there were means to save mankind without lifting the Son onto the cross; still more, that there were means to take away from this cross at least some of its unbearable fierceness (or to put off the execution to another time)… The source of this thought lay in the very same place from which all the other holy thoughts and feelings of the God-man had their origin—in His boundless knowledge of the Heavenly Father’s omnipotence and wisdom, in His firm assurance that He always deals with His own children according to the law of free love, which excludes all involuntary necessity. The God-man’s deepest humility, untempted by the glory that was to follow His sufferings, made the thought all the stronger still, that the Father could accomplish His purpose, so to speak, without His human cooperation… What was the heart to do amid this struggle of thoughts and feelings, each of which was as strong in itself as it was plausible, lawful, and holy?

Sages of this world, philosophers with the morality of the Stoics—you might, perhaps, have hidden such feelings within yourselves; that is, you would have remained in an inward hell, at a time when a single prayerful glance toward heaven could have drawn you out of it. But the great Sufferer of Gethsemane stood far above such proud and unnatural greatness of soul. Troubled, covered in sweat, Jesus falls to His knees, casts Himself upon the ground, and cries out: «My Father, if it is possible» (all things are possible to You), «let this cup pass from Me: yet not as I will, but as You will; let Your will be done!.»

There was no answer!.. The Father seemed not to hear the Son! And the anguish of soul did not cease. On the contrary, the most pure flesh now began to suffer along with the most pure soul. The great Son of David entered into that state in which His forefather once cried out: «The pains of Hades encompassed me».

In anguish of soul, receiving no answer from the Father, Jesus breaks off His prayer and goes to the disciples, to find comfort with them in shared prayer. But they are asleep. Weariness had overcome them, for the apostles, despite all the Teacher’s predictions, still did not fully grasp what awaited them, and so did not fear the future. Had they foreseen the cross of Jesus with all its horrors, they would surely not have fallen asleep at such a moment; yet we ourselves often give ourselves over to a far worse sleep, even while knowing full well what our sins have cost the Son of God.

Strange it was, however, to see how even Peter—who but an hour before had promised to lay down his life for his Teacher—could not stand against ordinary human weakness. «Simon, are you sleeping too,—the Lord said—could you not watch with Me even one hour? Watch,—the Lord continued, turning to the other two disciples, roused by His coming—watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.» These words sounded in such a way that it was plain: they poured forth from a heart torn with sorrow.

The request to the disciples for prayer and watchfulness had been prompted by a brief calm that had settled over Christ’s spirit. But a new, dark thought flashed across it, disturbing His soul’s peace and, with a strong surge of distress and sorrow, overshadowing in the God-man’s mind the Father’s eternal will. Withdrawing from the disciples, He again knelt and sank into prayer. He prayed for the same thing as before, but now with a different feeling. «Father,» Jesus prayed, «if this cup cannot pass from Me unless I drink it, let Your will be done!» (Mt 26:42.) A change had come: instead of a direct petition for the cup of suffering to be taken away, there now sounds a conviction of the holy necessity of the cross, in this very form and at this very time; the thought «all things are possible to You», which had been the chief source of the temptation, is forgotten; devotion to God’s will is expressed more vividly and fully, while His own desire visibly weakens, passing into complete submission to heaven’s decrees.

But this prayer, too, remained without an answer, because none was needed by the Only-begotten Son of God. He Himself had to pronounce the answer to Himself, having risen—through self-denial—to that height of spirit, that union with the Father, at which every doubt, and even every petition, vanishes, and only the one holy will of God remains.

Sinking under the weight of the inward cross, Jesus again goes to the disciples, still hoping, in His extraordinary humility, to find support and comfort in their prayer; and again finds them asleep!.. The struggle of the new Israel with God had to take place without witnesses; in it there was no room for helpers. «I alone have trodden the winepress of God’s wrath, and of the peoples there was no man with Me» — so Isaiah once sang, foreseeing the sufferings of the Messiah.

The disciples awoke, but a single glance at them was enough to see that they were unfit for prayer. The Evangelist Luke (Lk 22:45) notes that they were sleeping from sorrow; and St. Mark (Mk 14:40) adds that their eyes had grown heavy, and they did not know what to answer Him. That state of sleepy weakness, so hard to overcome, is known to everyone from experience.

Leaving the disciples, Jesus turned a third time from earth to heaven and, being in an agony, as the Evangelist Luke notes, prayed still more earnestly (Lk 22:44). The words spoken were the same as before, but the feelings had now finally changed. The human spirit cannot long waver between opposites; it must incline decisively to one side or the other. Still less was this possible in a prayer such as Jesus’s. «Your will be done» — pronounced this third time—was already the expression of a decisive victory.

The more the spirit was strengthened, the weaker the flesh became. The God-man’s bodily strength was brought to such exhaustion that His anguish equaled the pangs of death, and the sweat that broke out, in the Evangelist Luke’s words, was like drops of blood falling to the ground—an expression weighty even taken figuratively, and weightier still taken literally: the annals of history record, though rarely, instances of suffering unto a sweat of blood.

Such an effort might have cost the Son of Man His life, or robbed Him of the strength to bear the coming sufferings with the majesty befitting Him. Now, in the Only-begotten Son, what had been promised to the rest of God’s children had to be fulfilled, to show that the Heavenly Father’s love allows no one to be tempted beyond his strength. And so, instead of an answer to His prayer, an angel appeared to strengthen Jesus—appearing in such a way that even the disciples nearby could perceive that someone was secretly conversing with the Teacher.

The angel, of course, sought above all to strengthen Jesus’s spirit. Human nature is such that a single thought, flashing into the memory, can drive away distress and restore peace. Yet, since the anguish of spirit had told so dreadfully upon the body too—which grows faint together with the spirit, but does not recover as quickly as it does—the angel’s comfort no doubt touched the God-man’s bodily strength as well.

Jesus is strengthened by an angel! You who feel the full weight of the words: «Son of God, Mediator of God and men, Author and Perfecter of the salvation of mankind» — you can understand what an abyss of mysteries is contained in these few words! Providence was not pleased to reveal to us which of the heavenly powers was found worthy to perform this unique, divine service. But whoever this blessed spirit may have been, we owe him eternal gratitude: in strengthening the Author of our salvation in such decisive moments, he thereby strengthened each of us as well… The temptation ended in a perfect assurance of the beneficial necessity of the cross, with all its horrors, and precisely now. After this the God-man regained that firmness of spirit which had marked His whole life amid every danger and privation, and which would remain with Him through His sufferings. So it commonly happens with those who are tempted: the harder the struggle, the more the spirit is strengthened by it.