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To consider the events at Gethsemane, the
best place for a group is the private Franciscan garden across from the official
one. It is locked, but the guide can arrange for the Custodian to let us in.
Here we can find a place on the grass amid olive trees and read the text and
take time for silent meditation. Matthew 26:36-46Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to His disciples, "Sit here while I go over there and pray." And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed. Then He said to them, "My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me." And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will." And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, "So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour? Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, "My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done." Again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. And He left them again, and went away and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more. Then He came to the disciples and said to them, "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. Get up, let us be going; behold, the one who betrays Me is at hand!" "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will." This prayer marks the beginning of the Passion. Paul
calls Jesus the last
Adam, come to redeem the sin of the first. And what was the sin of the first?
The eating of the fruit in the Garden of Eden. That can be interpreted as an
act of self-assertion, of "I will." And here is Jesus, in a different
garden, undoing that: "Not as I will, rather as you will." Here, in Christian belief, an age comes to fulfillment:
the rupture that began in the Garden of Eden is healed in the Garden
of Gethsemane. Jerusalem from Solomon to Herod The Cemeteries, the Golden Gate and Judgment Day Dominus Flevit ("The Lord weeps")
© 2003 Near East Tourist Agency (NET) Text © 2003 Stephen Langfur
Scripture taken from the NEW A
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