The Agony

Tonight I commemorate the Agony in the Garden; that time when Christ went with His apostles to Gethsemane to pray. They fell asleep on Him, each time He went back to them, they were asleep again.

It is in this moment, more than any other, that we see just how human Christ was, alongside the divine. We see Him afraid, fearing for His life, pleading and begging with His Father in Heaven to allow the cup to be passed from Him. He knew his time was running short, He knew what was to come; the pain, the torture, the death on the cross.

He was scared of dying. I can relate to that; I've had thanatophobic attacks for years. They've mostly subsided since my conversion to Catholicism, but there's still that intense knifing fear once in a while. When I read of Him fearing what was to come, I find incredible solace and peace that the Messiah would be afraid too. But you know what? He dried His tears and embraced the one who would betray Him. He moved on and went nobly to the end of His time on this Earth, at least the first time around.

We still feel this shadow of His agony today in our everyday lives and in our world. Twelve years ago today, two disturbed young men killed classmates and teachers at Columbine High School. Today, people are being killed around the world for being nothing more than in the wrong place in the wrong time, like the civilian populace of Misrata, Libya.

Yet, this is the beauty of the Agony in the Garden. His pain was cast aside and what He did lead to our salvation. If we look close enough, we can even see this in the pre-Christian faiths. Cicero, the famed orator once quoted a sibyal as saying that a King would come who must be recognized to be saved. It is said that he asked of the seeress, "In quem hominem?" He wanted to know about this man, and later Pontius Pilate would pronounce before the gathered crowds the day after the Agony in Garden, "Ecce Homo", or "behold the Man."

He went knowingly from the Garden to His doom, for our sins and for our salvation. He took upon Himself our sins; a saving manner that echoed the speech of Hermes to the bound Prometheus, "Look not for any end, moreover, to this curse, until some God appears to accept upon his head the pangs of thy own sins vicarious". Our sins are many and varied, not yet committed almost two thousand years ago...yet Christ wept, pleaded and begged His Father not to let Him die, and then eventually stood and wiped away the tears and turned to embrace the man who would sell Him for the equivalent of $24 in modern currency.

The Messiah gave up His life for us. But He did not do so in a blind manner, but rather He did so as a man. Courage is not the absence of fear it is said, but rather, it is the ability to face and overcome it. For the sins of the world, the Christ overcame His fears and surrendered Himself to the divine plan.