Dear Mimi:

Before I give the quote from Christ's prayer in the garden, I would like to give you a taste of the context as I experience Christ.

Christ was around 30-33 years old. Before He started His public ministry He had obviously discovered His mission in the writings of the prophets. Indeed many times He mentioned that His mission was foretold - it was His will that the covenant His Father had made with His chosen people would be fulfilled in Him.

Christians accept Christ as the Son of God, the only begotten of the Father. We believe He is the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word. We also believe He was true man. He has a human nature and that nature is united with His Divine Nature. We cannot understand how this is. It is a mystery.

We cannot fully appreciate how He developed in His humanity. We know that He is like us in all things except sin. For me this means that while He was on earth He dealt with all human emotions. His human inheritance like ours came from his family and ancestral history, as I am Irish he was a Jew a descendant of Abraham in flesh and spirit.

So, on the night of the Last Supper we have a thirty-year-old who knows His mission is to die for all humanity. He gathers His friends about Him, gives us the Eucharist, and tells them his time has come. Whether He knew all the particulars might not be important because His dread could well have been deeper if He knew than it would be if He did not. We do know that He knew the some of the details of His suffering and crucifixion. But, did he know the humiliation, the fear, and the anguish he would experience?

Following the Last Supper He takes His closest friends, Peter, James, and John with him to the garden. He was grieving - He said so to His friends, "grieving to the point of death," "remain here," He tells them, and "keep watch with me

As was His custom He went off by Himself to pray. He engaged in prayer throughout His life. He prays, "My Father, if it is possible let this cup pass from me; yet not as I will, but as thou wilt."

He returns to the place He left His friends and finds them sleeping. Imagine how He felt, disheartened, disappointed, disturbed. He says to Peter, the one who boasted of his love and fidelity, "So you could not watch with me for one hour?" This suggests to me that He had been praying for some time and obviously went back to His friends for comfort. He found indifference. How this must have weighed upon His soul. "Does no one feel for me?"

He goes off again and prays a second time, "My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, thy will be done" I see movement here. First a kind of plea, secondly an acceptance.

He returns to His friends and finds them sleeping. Still no succor or support. He goes a third time and prays like He did before. We have nothing more about this prayer. I sense that he prayed for strength to "finish" his mission. Among His last words on the cross were, "It is finished."

After that last prayerful episode, He seeks out His friends once more. He finds them asleep, wakens them and tells them His hour is at hand. How deeply must He have experienced abandonment, loneliness, fearfulness, and dread. However, His continued prayer must have given Him strength and support. He becomes resolute. He prepared and is ready to present himself for His betrayal by yet another "friend," Judas.

Perhaps we might all learn a lesson that prayer is the gateway to the strength we need to withstand the ordeal of suffering and become one with God. How easy it is to say as we do in the Our Father, "thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven." How difficult it is to do fulfill that very prayer when having our will done seems much more acceptable.

In my garrulous fashion I have offered more that you asked. Please God it will have meaning for you.

Lvya,

Jim