The Agony In The Garden

Fruit Of The Mystery: Sorrow For Sin

The following meditations are provided to assist you while praying the Holy Rosary. It is offered in a format where a question is posed to lead the meditation and then is followed by an answer below it.  It may be more helpful to grow in your meditation skills if you try to contemplate the question while praying this decade of the Rosary, and view the possible answer upon completing the prayers for the Mystery.

The meditations below offer possible answers to questions regarding these Mysteries.  Because the Wisdom of God is infinite, there are limitless insights that one may gain from meditating repeatedly upon the questions surrounding these Mysteries.  There are no wrong or right answers when praying the Holy Rosary in this way.  We are simply seeking to be inspired in our understanding of who Jesus is and how much He loves us, as the Holy Spirit gently guides us through reflective prayer.

For many reasons it may be difficult to engage our minds to enter into meditating on the Mysteries at hand.  An alternative option is to simply meditate upon the meaning of the core prayers of the Holy Rosary as you are praying them.  You may find these reflections on the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Glory Be prayers to be helpful during these times.

The Agony

1.  What made Jesus sweat blood in the Garden of Gethsemane?

There were many reasons that contributed to the agony Jesus experienced in the Garden.   A great concern for our Lord must have been knowing what His Mother was about to witness and endure as He suffered His Passion and death.  Jesus also knew what treacherous evil was about to overcome, overshadow and darken the hearts of His persecutors who were created out of love through Him.  He was also terribly grieved for what offenses were to be committed against His Father, by inflicting tortures, suffering and death upon His only begotten Son.  Jesus was most sorrowful to the point of death for those souls who still would choose not to be saved through Him, even after offering His life for them.

2.  Why did the Angel come down to minister to Jesus in His Agony?

We know that Angels are messengers of God, who are typically sent to minister God’s grace in response to prayers.  This is why Jesus tells His disciples that the Father would send Him twelve legions of Angels if prayed for help in the Garden.  Who must have been praying for the Angel to come to Jesus’ assistance? While the disciples fell asleep in His great hour of need, Jesus was supported by the prayers of His Mother.  There were several clues that must have helped Mary know that He was in severe distress in the Garden.  A mother’s intuition always senses when something is wrong with their child, and how much greater must have this intimacy been between their two Sacred Hearts.  In a practical way, Mary would have been present at the Passover celebration in the Upper Room, and must have recognized the distress in His countenance as He departed after supper for the Garden with His disciples.  Knowing Him so well, her insight as to why He was instituting the Holy Eucharist this evening would also have signified to her that His time was at hand.  In all likeliness Jesus probably had a last goodbye with His Mother, sometime in this evening before He would freely surrender Himself to His death.  Regardless of the many reasons why, Mary must have been praying unceasingly for her Son as He was about to take on the sins of world. In the same way, our Blessed Mother intercedes most fervently for us in our times of great need.

We read that “In His anguish He prayed with all the greater intensity.”  In these most treacherous moments of emotional, spiritual and psychological suffering in the Garden, Jesus teaches us that as our anguish and pain increase in life, we must pray even more fervently for the grace to continue in God’s Will.  There is no guarantee that God will take away our burdens, but He does promise us that He will be right beside us to offer us the strength, comfort and courage to patiently endure our trials. 

The Passion

2.  Why does Jesus freely choose to enter into His Passion, if He knew what suffering He would have to endure?  Is this an easy choice for Jesus?

It is for the love of His Father and His creation that Jesus willed to undergo the Passion.  And He showed this love by desiring to glorify the Father through obediently suffering for the salvation of souls.  When we consider the Agony in the Garden, we see Jesus consumed by sorrows and anguish.  His interior distress was so great that blood actually began to pour out like sweat.  Though He does not wish to enter into His Passion and asks that this chalice may pass from Him, He remains humbly obedient to the Father’s will and prays, “Nevertheless not as I will, but as You will.”   Jesus becomes crushed by the weight of this suffering, and can truly be identified as the “Man of Sorrows” that the prophet Isaiah had written about.  By freely choosing to endure these temptations, Jesus wants us to realize that there is nothing that we experience- even temptations- that He has not experienced and conquered in His Humanity.  The purpose of this is to offer us strength and consolation in Him, when we are bearing the heavy burdens and temptations of life.  

3.  In what part of the Passion does Jesus begin to repair for our sins?

If God decided that the Blood of His Son was necessary to be offered as a covenant to forgive the sins of mankind, ultimately Jesus did not need to undergo torture to shed His Blood to save us.  We see this in the Garden where so great was His love for us that His Precious Blood begins to pour out through His pores on its own to begin to make the reparations necessary for our sins.  

Temptation

1.  Why would our Father allow Jesus to be tempted so severely in the Garden?

Our most loving Father permitted such vile and treacherous temptation, severe enough to make our precious Savior sweat blood, because He alone knows what is best for us- even trials of the severest kind.  Knowing the heart of Jesus so intimately, because it is one with His, Our Father was keenly aware that His agony over the thought of the helpless state of man in the depth of our sins was what was necessary to consume His Heart with the fire unquenchable for the salvation of souls.  This would drive Him to endure all things- even to death on the Cross.

The Will of God

1.  How does God help us through temptation when trying to discern His Will?

Our most difficult temptations as humans often come as we attempt to discern our self-will from that of Our Father’s.  Jesus experienced this struggle in His Humanity in the Garden.  Just like Our Father did for Jesus, He sends His Angels to minister to us in our times of need, who help to make Our Father’s Will clear to us.  It is then we experience peace- when our wills become one with Our Father’s.  It was in this way, while Jesus was watching and praying that the Angels ministered to Him, and in this way that they continue to minister unto each one of us in our darkest hours.  We must also watch and pray when seeking to know God’s Will for our lives.

2.  What human factors play a role in discerning God’s Will?

Emotions help us to discern the Will of God.  Blood, sweat and tears are physical responses triggered by emotions.  They are very much indicators of the degree of conformity of our will with the Father’s.  Through prayer, which helps us to discern our state of emotion and the resistive part of our will, and reading the signs which God places in our lives to help us, we are given the opportunity to see the Father’s Will and freely choose it in obedience.  The Angels assist us as they minister the gifts of the Holy Spirit to illumine the way and strengthen our hearts to make good decisions.  The peace we experience if we surrender to God’s Will is our best confirmation that we are on the right path.  On the other hand, when we feel inner turmoil it is a good indicator that we are not yet in conformity with His Will for us, either mentally as we prepare to make a decision or if it is a decision we have already acted upon.

We may not exactly love God’s Will for us, but that does not mean that we do not love God.  When we consider Jesus’ Agony in the Garden, we see that though He had prepared for this ‘hour’ His whole life, He still falls prostrate in prayer as the moment arrives, asking to avoid the Passion if the Father so willed.  As was the case with Jesus, what matters to the Father most is our faithfulness and obedience to His Will despite our selfish desires. It is during these times, when our wills are at odds and we still choose His obediently, that we actually display our greatest love for Him.

Betrayal

1.  Why does Jesus call Judas ‘friend’ as he approaches to betray Him?

Even moments before He was betrayed, Jesus displays His great and merciful love for us sinners.  In one last attempt to soften Judas’ heart and to save his soul, Jesus calls him friend to open his eyes to the love He still had for him, regardless of his sinful intentions.

Go Back