Acting in Agony

I keep thinking about the Agony in the Garden. It's the time of year for that, both in liturgy and in that aching in my soul that I can't seem to kick.

Before He was betrayed, Jesus begged and pleaded to be set free of the circumstances that led Him here. No longer could He put the future out of mind. He was to go and die for people who didn't really know Him and mostly didn't care. What's worse is that He had to do it all alone.

And then what? He returns from that plea to find Peter and the others passed out. It's a beautiful piece of irony. I can almost see the slightest bitter smirk on His lips before the crushing sadness comes again. Just when I need someone to be there for Me, they aren't, Jesus might have thought. That sight was the salt of the earth He preached about being rubbed into the wound of grief.

Yet He went and did it again, and then once more, praying with a passion so intense and a grief so penetrating he sweat blood. Really. The capillaries burst under all of that strain and blood came out of the pores when there was no more sweat to give. How many people do you know who have done that?

But what happened next is perhaps the most important part of the whole story. He knew there was no choice but to go through with His Passion -- after all, it's not as if you can resign being the Messiah, or just erase whatever your life circumstances are. So He got up off the ground, dried His tears, and moved forward.

I can't even imagine the strength it must have taken for Him to rise from there and walk away. 

We can't change the past, and we can't freeze the present moment. Sometimes, things happen that are well beyond our control. The only thing to do is play the cards we're dealt the best we know how.

And we live with the promise that when we go to die, we will live again.

"I have promised, and I will do it," says the Lord.

Do we believe Him?