Holy Week 2015, The Five Sorrowful Mysteries: The Agony in the Garden

The moment we stand up for something, we are faced with the temptation to forget it. We realise that our stance may not be popular, that it will cost us, that it will set people against us, that it will hurt. It is in this place that we see Our Lord fighting with the same bedevilment that each one of us faces. He knows the full extent of what He must go through and here, the night before it happens, He must face the agony of knowing that He can still run and hide, that if He chooses not to, He will suffer indescribable pain and degradation, and that if He does not do so, then humanity will have no other hope to be saved from evil by being crucified in Him.

Could Our Lord have succumbed to temptation? No, for the Lord's human nature is inextricably bound with His divine nature, the human will with the divine will. Yet His human nature must suffer the same instincts for self-preservation, and so for Our Lord the agony is doubled as Satan himself tries to tear Our Lord apart from within. Of course, he fails for Our Lord wills not that the cup be taken from Him without His Father's will.

The Agony in the Garden is indeed a Mystery of the Personhood of Our Lord. It is a Mystery in which we partake every time we are tempted to fall away into apostasy, apathy and complacency. Our temptation frequently leads us into sin, but it is because of Our Lord's rejection of these miserable demons that we too may find escape from them.