Holy Thursday 2007

The events of Holy Thursday are so many and momentous, so impregnated with divine significance, that they cannot adequately be traversed in a single sermon. In recent years I have selected for our meditation some aspect of the Last Supper: the Holy Eucharist itself, the antecedent ritual of Passover, the purification of the apostles by the washing of their feet, the institution of the priesthood, and so on. While these subjects are more than capable of bearing greater development, I have thought it opportune for us to turn our attention to the events which followed the Supper on this night in the Agony in the Garden.

It is remarkable how calmly and majestically our Lord had conducted Himself in the upper room during the Last Supper. It is difficult to comprehend His complete composure in view of all He knew would transpire in His Passion. In the institution of the Holy Eucharist, in the washing of feet, in his long series of prayers to God, there is a poise and a commanding manner of our Lord that is astonishing. Before He left the upper room of the Cenacle, He even had the presence of mind needed to sing with His Apostles the Passover psalm of thanksgiving. Moreover, His nocturnal walk with His Apostles towards the Mount of Olives was apparently made in complete silence, without any hint of disquiet or agitation. Perhaps this stillness was due to the realization of what had just taken place in partaking of our Lord’s very flesh and blood. But this silence may also have been the needed mental preparation for the effusion of prayers and sighs that would soon arise from our Lord’s mouth in Gethsemani. (The word Gethsemani, by the way, means ‘oil press,’ an appropriate term because it indicated that here Christ’s precious blood would be wrenched from his sacred body, like oil pressed from olives.)

The calm which I noted in our Lord’s demeanor even though He was faced with the certainty of fierce assaults against Him is already a point of instruction on the importance of remaining recollected and trusting in God in times of crisis, danger and worry. Though He could foresee that He would be handed over to His enemies, He did not recoil. This was not due to a highly cultivated stoicism but to His ardent love for humanity, a love that could never languish or weaken. If anything, the thoughts of the approaching Passion only served to stimulate His movement towards it to achieve more readily the salvation of men.

Scripture instructs us in rather disconcerting terms–uncomfortable language–about the manner in which Jesus prayed that night. Saint Matthew remembered that at once He began to be sorrowful and troubled and that He said, “My soul is sorrowful even unto death!” Saint Luke recalled that He was “in an agony...and [that] his sweat became like great drops of blood falling on the ground.” The Letter to the Hebrews adds yet more to illustrate the scene where it says, “Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard for His godly fear” (5:7). Saint Mark preserved His very words: “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mk 14:36).

The prayer of Jesus in the Garden reveals the depths of the intensity, of the concentration of His soul. While His human nature experienced a certain violence in foreseeing His approaching torments, He nevertheless remained firmly obedient to God. These contrary movements of pulling back in fear and moving forward in obedience was felt as a mighty internal struggle. But if our Lord experienced trembling and fear, it was only because He permitted them to befall Him. The sorrow that oppressed His Sacred Heart was accepted in the recognition that His Passion would redeem the souls of lost humanity. This eager motivation of His love for men and His even more ardent love for His Father was able to withstand the prospect of all the torments that were to come. When Jesus turned to His companions for some consolation over these sorrows, dismayed to find them asleep, He again directed His entreaties to heaven.

The apparition of an Angel in the Garden was, in part, a reproach and a shameful witness of the
inability of the Apostles to offer consolation to our Lord in His time of suffering. It seems that no one–the Blessed Mother aside–had sensed the true significance of what He was about to do. Not only was there no expression of gratitude for it, but even the recognition of its meaning was absent from their minds. Here was the Son of God over and over submitting His will to give up His precious life in order to save their lives, while they were unappreciative of His love, insensitive to His danger and even mindless of His purposes.

Our Lord’s agony in Gethsemani was not due to malevolent forces outside of His control. He suffered with the full consent of His will even though His humanity recoiled at the immense pain–mental and physical–that it would cost Him. What we commonly call the Agony in the Garden must not then be falsely construed as if our Lord suffered this mental anguish passively or reluctantly. Rather, He permitted Himself the vivid apprehension of His approaching torments and death and allowed Himself to be oppressed by fear. What resulted then was the violence and repugnance of human nature over what was being proposed for it. Every pore of His sacred body felt the sting of that foreknowledge. No wonder then that the weight of this anguish caused His body to sink to the ground in prostration. If there were nothing else but Holy Thursday’s agony–no Good Friday and crucifixion–there would have been enough of the Lord’s Passion–more than enough–to satisfy for all the sins of the world.

In all our own struggles against sin, in our interior battles against the sinful uprisings of our souls, we have not ever experienced such violence, such a revolt against ourselves as did Jesus in the Garden of Olives. In the Letter to the Hebrews we are chastened, should we ever suppose that we have already borne too much in our trials and temptations, by these thoughts: “Consider Him who endured..such hostility...so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. ... Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet” (Hb. 12: 3-4, 12). The agony of Christ reveals, among other things, His utter contempt for sin. In this we must not be deceived: God is not mildly amused nor faintly disapproving of our sins; He hates them.

The imitation of Christ in Gethsemani is more than merely observing the Model of persevering prayer. It is the refusal to allow ourselves to cave in to our evil inclinations; to yield to the craving of our impaired condition. Our Lord’s steadfast will to oppose the weaknesses of human nature in compliance to the will of God–so costly in the violence it did upon His holy body–signals us to do the needed violence to the internal upheavals we have to commit sin.


The submission of Jesus to the decree of the Father in Gethsemani is an act of will that can be replicated not only in the personal offering of oneself to God, but, even more importantly, in the act whereby we can participate in the very act that Christ made Holy Thursday night. Our participation in this is made possible because of our ‘incorporation’ in Christ–which means ‘forming part of His body.’ We can offer to God our Lord’s body and blood, even though it is not literally ours, in a secondary but true and valid act of offering. As we are wont to say, “Eternal Father, I offer you the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.” In this way, we exercise the priestly character of all the members of the Church.

In your agreement with the will of God through obedience, in your participation in this Holy Mass and adoration of the Holy Sacrament, in your conscious partnership with Christ in the offering of Himself to the Father you are truly imitating Christ and disposing yourselves for the service of His Redemption. This is the ‘right way’ to accompany our Lord on this rather lonely and sorrowful night, when human nature was shaken to its depths in the trembling humanity of our Savior.