Prayer About the Cup.

(Mat. 26:36-46; Mark 14:32-42; Luke 22:39-46; John 18:1).

As narrated by Saint Evangelist John, having finished His pontifical prayer, “He went out with His disciples over the Brook Kedron, where there was a garden, which He and His disciples entered. Kedron (meaning “black”) was an insignificant brook, which filled up with water after heavy rains. At other times it remained dry, or nearly so. It flowed through the Jehoshaphat valley and separated Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. Saint John writes that beyond this valley, there was a garden that the Lord entered with His disciples. However, he doesn’t name the garden and doesn’t say what transpired there before the arrival of Judas and the soldiers. Evangelists Matthew and Mark call it Gethsemane, while Luke indicates its location on Mount of Olives. All three narrate on the Lord’s prayer in this garden. Gethsemane means press for squeezing oil. Apparently, the garden grew olives and it was there that olive oil was prepared. It can be assumed that the garden’s owner was favorably inclined toward the Lord, because according to Saint John (18:2), He often gathered there with His disciples. That’s why after the Last Supper, Judas led the soldiers there in the firm expectation of finding Him, and he wasn’t wrong.

Upon entering the garden, the Lord stopped His disciples, saying: “Sit here while I go and pray,” and taking Peter, James and John, according to Saint Luke, withdrew from them “about a stone’s throw” — a distance that you can usually throw a stone, and began “to be troubled and deeply distressed.” “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful,” uttered the Lord to His most closest and trusted disciples. “Stay here and watch with Me.” According to both Saints Matthew and Mark, having walked “a little farther,” kneeling, He fell on His face and prayed: “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” This prayer was so intense that according to Saint Luke, “”His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” It is said that sometimes extreme moral sufferings, can truly produce perspiration of blood. Saint Luke states, that “an Angel appeared to Him from Heaven, strengthening Him.” Seemingly, God the Father had left His Son temporarily (see Mat. 27:46). That’s why He is being comforted and strengthened by an Angel.

What was the reason for the incarnate Son of God to suffer so extremely and be so sorrowful in the Gethsemane garden?

Who among us sinful souls would be presumptuous enough to assert, that he truly knows everything that had transpired in the holy soul of God-Man when the decisive hour approached, which would see Him betrayed to a death on the cross in order to save mankind? Currently, just as before, efforts continue to be made to explain the causes of the Lord’s moral agonies, endured by Him in the Gethsemane garden, in those pre-death hours. The most natural hypothesis, is that it was His human nature that was sorrowed and afraid of death. As Blessed Theophylactus says: “Death didn’t enter into mankind through its nature. That’s why human nature is afraid and flees from it.” Death is the consequence of sin (Rom. 5:12, 15), and that’s why the sinless nature of God-Man should not have been exposed to death. To her, the appearance of death was unnatural: that’s why the pure, sinless nature of the Lord is rebelling against death, lamenting and anguishing at its sight. These moral sufferings of Christ are proof of the dual natures in Him: Divine and human, which the heretics-Monophysites rejected, and also that He had two wills, which the heretics-Monophylites rejected.

Undoubtedly, together with this, the moral sufferings were emanating from the fact that the Lord had accepted all the sins of the world upon Himself — and was going to die for them: the suffering the world would have had to endure for its sins were now concentrated on Him Alone. It is also quite possible that the devil, having departed from Him temporarily (Luke 4:13), had now approached Him with his temptations, attempting (even though unsuccessfully) to divert the Lord from His impending sufferings on the cross. The Lord’s sorrows were also caused through the realization of man’s heartlessness and ingratitude toward God.

The first two Evangelists narrate that having stood up from His prayer, the Lord twice approaches the three disciples that have stayed back nearby. However, instead of finding solace in their attentiveness and faithfulness to Him, their readiness to be vigilant with Him, He finds them sleeping. Chastising them mildly, the lord adds: “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” How could it happen that the disciples fell asleep at such a moment? Saint Luke explains that they fell asleep through sorrow. Life testifies to the fact that sometimes intense sufferings, indeed produce strong over-exhaustion of the nervous system, so that the person is incapable of staying awake. The Lord specifically directs His reprimand to Peter, because it was only just prior to this that he had sworn his faithfulness to the Lord. As great temptations and great trials of faith awaited the disciples, the Lord urges them to pray and be vigilant so as to overcome this temptation. “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” means: your soul is willing to fight these temptations and is capable of overcoming them, However, human nature is weak and, with the waning of vigilance and prayer, is capable of falling tremendously.

The Lord stopped three times to pray. The first time, He prayed so that the cup of suffering will pass Him by, the second time He expressed His outright subordination to God’s will, and was sent an Angel to completely strengthen Him in this resolve, after which He exclaimed with full determination: “Your will be done.” Having prayed the third time, He came to the disciples to warn them of the betrayer’s approach: “Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners,” indicating that He has no need of their assistance. (When the Lord was ready to be betrayed, He says: now you are sleeping; or expresses this to shame them, as though saying: now that the betrayer has approached, if it is convenient for you and time allows to sleep, then sleep, — Blessed Theophylactus). “Into the hands of sinners,” — according to Saint Chrysostom, “the Lord is saying this to enhearten the disciples’ spirits, that what is happening to Him is an act of evil sinners, and not because of some sinful fault in Him.” “Rise, let us be going,” i.e. let us go and meet the betrayer, so that what has to happen according to the Scripture, is fulfilled.