We are just three Sundays behind the great season of Advent which announces the coming of the Saviour. It may seem quite strange to think about the above topic for some of us, who might have made the episode of the agony of Christ a folder to be opened only during Lent. But I take it as a privileged instance to reflect on this topic which enables me to understand the purpose of Christ’s coming. What preparation can be greater for Christmas than to reflect on the agony of Christ, who came to suffer for us? The best expression of Christ’s agony is captured quite dramatically in the Gospel of Luke, wherein the Divine Saviour sweats blood as result of emotional breakdown. Let us first look at the medial reason, how such a phenomenon can occur.
The clinical term for this medical condition is “hematohidrosis.” Around sweat glands, there are multiple blood vessels in a net-like from. Under the pressure of great stress the vessels constrict. Then as the anxiety passes, the blood vessels dilate to the point of rupture. The blood goes into the sweat glands. As the sweat glands are producing a lot of sweat, it pushes the blood to the surface – coming out as droplets of blood mixed with sweat. It is quite clear that sweating blood is caused by a very intense emotional breakdown or when anxiety reaches its zenith.
As we understand physiology behind sweating blood, we need to reflect on Jesus’ agony in the garden, as the theme invites. The drops of blood the Jesus sweat in the garden of Gethsemane surely fulfills “the anguish of His soul” that Isaiah spoke of (Isaiah 53). We are told of this incident only in the Gospel of Luke. That seems appropriate because Luke was a physician and he would have been naturally interested in medical details.
The fact that Jesus sweat drops of blood is an indication to us of how severe his suffering was. It points to the truth that besides being fully God, He was fully human. But He did not use the prerogative of being God to evade any of the pain He was about to undergo. HE FELT it all in his physical body and knowing what was coming was extreme anguish in his mind and emotions. He knew that He was physically facing one of the most horrible forms of capital punishment there has ever been. His body was human, and he would feel everything at least as intensely as we would.
In the case of our blessed Lord, the predicament which was in His mind was not physical pain, but moral evil or sin. There was indeed that natural fear of death which He would have had because of His human nature; but it was not such vulgar fear which dominated His agony. It was something far more deadly than death. It was the burden of the mystery of the world’s sin which lay on His heart. Besides, in addition to His human intellect, which had grown by experience, He had the infinite intellect of God which knows all things and sees the past and future as present.
As a result the Redeemer looked to the past and to all the sins that had ever been committed. The sin of Adam was there, when as the head of the humanity he lost for all men the heritage of God’s grace; the sin of Cain was there with his hands stained with his brother’s blood; the abominations of Sodom and Gomorrah were there; the outright rejection by His own people by falling before false gods was there; all sins were there: sins committed young; sins committed by old; sins committed in the darkness thinking that eyes of God could no pierce; sins committed in the light, sins too awful to be mentioned, sins too terrible to name, Sin! Sin! Sin!
Once our Saviour had brought all of this iniquity of the past upon His soul, he now reached into the future. He saw that His coming into the world itself would intensify the hatred of some against God; He saw the betrayals of future Judases; the sins of heresy that torn apart Christ’s Mystical Body, the sins of communists who wiped out the ambassadors of God from the earth; He saw the broken marriage vows, lies, adulteries, murders. Thus from the East, West, North and South the foul smell of world’s sin rushed upon Him like a flood.
In between the sins of the past which pulled upon His soul as if they were his own, and the sins of the future which made him wonder about the usefulness of His death – was the horror of the present. In His frightful loneliness, Jesus found the apostles asleep three times. Men who were worried about the struggle against the powers of darkness could not sleep – but these men slept. No wonder, then, with the accumulated guilt of all the ages clinging to Himself, His bodily nature gave way. He sensed guilt to such an extent that it forced blood from his body, blood which fell like crimson beads upon the olive roots of Gethsemane making the first Rosary of Redemption.
Christ’s bloody sweat poured out in thin fashion should send sparks of fear into every single vein in our body. But, unfortunately, we become so used to sin that we do not realize its horror. So many of our sins are sins of despair. They are not sins of malice; rather they are what can be called practical despair. They are sins where we say, “Given my life, I’m going to settle for second-best or third-best because ‘first-best’ is never going to happen for me anyway.” I fine it apt to quote an advice of a father to his son, “if you are going to be faithful in anything, whether you are going to be a priest or follow religious vocation, whether you are going to be married or whatever, you better learn how to sweat blood because that’s what it’s going to take.”
What we get in the garden of Gethsemane is Jesus. That’s because Jesus is out model. He is the person we all look upto when we suffer. Jesus’ attitude at Gethsemane contains a precious lesson for us to remember in time of suffering: however deep our grief may be, it will never compare with that of Jesus at Gethsemane. The only way to face suffering successfully is prayer. Let us get convinced that God is our loving Father also in time of suffering; at no time may we be so sure of His love as when we suffer.
We need to always remember that it’s only after the agony that the angel can come. When Jesus left the Last Supper room, He could not do it. But the transition came in the garden. Only after He had broken down, had sweated blood, had told His Father many times, “I don’t want to do this,” He finally broke down and accepted it, and rose as an athlete to walk to His passion. How many of us, in our way, experience that frustration, that same sense of abandonment? Yet, at the moment of acceptance, God’s liberating grace flows, as Luke says of Jesus in the Garden, the angel comes.
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