Wojtyla - The Prayer in Gethsemane (from Sign of Contradiction)

The prayer in Gethsemane

1. Sharing the prayer of Jesus

In this meditation we are going to return to a subject already

spoken of: prayer. But this time, rather than talking about

prayer, I would like us - as far as is humanly possible, and

with the aid of grace - to share in the prayer of Christ

himself.

We know how often he used to pray completely alone,

withdrawing from the company of his disciples and keeping

himself totally free to converse with the Father. More often

than not he did this while the others were resting: “And he

spent the whole night in prayer” — “pernoctans in oratione

Dei” (Lk 6,12), as we read in the Gospel. On one occasion

only did Jesus specifically ask the Apostles to share his

prayer with him, and that was in Gethsemane where the

Master had gone, together with them, on Holy Thursday

night. All that Jesus had said and done in the course of the

last supper was still fresh in their minds and hearts. And

then, leaving most of them behind on entering Gethsemane,

he took just three of them with him: Peter, James and John,

the ones he had taken to Mount Tabor, and said to them:

“Stay here and keep vigil with me”. And then, moving a

short distance away from them, he prostrated himself and

prayed (cf Mt 26,38-39). It was all a clear appeal to them to

share his prayer.

Why at that specific moment? Why on that occasion

only? Perhaps because he had already made them sharers in

his mystery in one way: he had given them bread to eat

saying: “This is my body offered in sacrifice for you”

(Lk 22,19), and wine to drink saying: “This cup is the new

covenant in my blood shed for you’, charging them to “Do

this in remembrance of me” (Lk 22,19-20). In so doing he

had made them sharers in his mystery at its most profound

level.

2. Great understanding of mankind

Jesus begins to pray. Moving a short distance away from the

three, he begins to converse with the Father — as on so many

other occasions. This time, however, his prayer is decisive: it

originates in the depths of his soul and discloses the whole

truth of his human nature, not only showing his acute

anxiety at this particular moment in his life as Son of man

but also bringing together, so to speak, all the anxieties felt

by the one who said of himself: “I am the good shepherd.

The good shepherd gives his own life for his sheep”

(Jn 10,11). Jesus embarks on this prayer with an immeasur-

able universal concern for each and every one: “I know my

sheep and my sheep know me” (Jn 10,14). This prayer

reflects Jesus’s great knowledge and understanding of man

and the whole of human nature, sunk in the abyss after the

first sin and subsequently straying further and further from

the will of the Father, with consequences more frightening

than those of the original disobedience.

This prayer is the prayer of great understanding of

mankind, for it was uttered by the one of whom scripture

says: “He had no need of any man’s testimony concerning

another, for he knew very well himself what was in each one”

(Jn 2,25).

3. “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass me by”

What are the words he uses in this prayer? We know them

very well: they are few but unforgettable, simple but highly

charged with the emotion of the hour — the hour in which the

servant of Yahweh must fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah by saying

his ‘Yes’. “Jesus Christ was not ‘Yes’ and ‘No’: in him

there was only *Yes’” (2 Cor 1,19).

Christ’s words in Gethsemane are very simple, wholly

appropriate for expressing the most profound of truths and

the most important of choices. Jesus says: “Father, if it be

possible, let this cup pass me by; nevertheless, not my will

but yours be done” (Mt 26,39). We may remark that by this

time it was no longer possible for the cup to pass him by,

because it had already been passed on by him to the Church

and had become “the cup of the new and everlasting

covenant”, the cup of the blood “which will be shed”

(Mk 14,24). And yet, in spite of all that, Jesus says: “If it be

possible, let it pass me by ...”’.

What is the meaning of: “If it be possible”? Is this not the

prayer of the Son of God who, in all the truth of his human

nature, “sees into all things, even the depths of God”

(1 Cor 2,10) in the Holy Spirit? Since he shares to the full

the mystery of God’s freedom, he knows that events do not

necessarily have to take this course; but at the same time he

shares God’s love, and so he knows that there is no other

way. He had in fact come to Gethsemane in order to receive

the death sentence that had long ago been pronounced, in

eternity no doubt (Col 2,14). So, having come, he fell on his

knees and prayed — as if that death sentence, already

pronounced in eternity, had to be pronounced there, at that

very hour. “If it be possible, may this cup pass me by ...”.

Prayer is always a wonderful reduction of eternity to the

dimension of a moment in time, a reduction of the eternal

wisdom to the dimension of human knowledge, feeling and

understanding, a reduction of the eternal Love to the

dimension of the human heart, which at times is incapable of

absorbing its riches and seems to break.

The sweat which appeared like drops of blood on the face

of Jesus as he prayed in Gethsemane is a sign of the acute

torment he suffered in his human heart. “And Christ, in the

days of his flesh, offered prayers and supplications to him

who could save him from death ...” (Heb 5,7).

4. A meeting between the human will and the will of God

This prayer is in fact a meeting between the human will of

Jesus Christ and the eternal will of God, which at this

moment can be seen as the will of the Father concerning his

Son. The Son had become man in order that this meeting

might express all the truth of the human will and the human

heart, anxious to escape the evil and the suffering, the

condemnation and the scourging, the crown of thorns, the

cross and death. He had become man in order that this truth

might then serve to reveal all the grandeur of the love that

expresses itself in a “gift of oneself’, in sacrifice: “God loved

the world so much that he sacrificed his only-begotten Son”

(Jn 3,16). In this hour that “eternal Love” has to give proof

of itself by the sacrifice of a human heart. And it does indeed

give proof of itself! The Son does not shrink from giving his

own heart, for it to become an altar, a place of complete

self-abnegation even before the cross was to serve that

purpose.

The human will, the will of the man, meets the will of

God. The human will speaks by means of the heart and

expresses the human truth: “If it be possible, may this cup

pass me by”. But at the same time the human will surrenders

itself to the will of God, as if passing beyond the human

truth, beyond the cry of the heart: it is as if it were taking

unto itself not only the eternal judgment of the Father and

the Son in the Holy Spirit, but also the power that flows

from God, from the will of God, from the God who is Love

(1 Jn 4,8).

All prayer is a meeting between the human will and the

will of God; for this we are indebted to the Son’s obedience

to the Father: “Your will be done”. And obedience does not

mean only renunciation of one’s own will; it means opening

one’s spiritual eyes and ears to the Love which is God

himself, God who loved the world so much that for its sake

he sacrificed his only-begotten Son. ‘Here is the man”. After

his prayer in Gethsemane Jesus Christ, Son of God, rises to

his feet fortified: fortified by the obedience which has

enabled him once again to attain to Love, as gift from the

Father for the world and for all mankind. He rises to his feet

and goes back to his disciples saying: “‘Look, my betrayer is

close at hand” (Mk 14,42).

5. The mystery of Redemption

This is the third time he has broken off from prayer and

gone back to them. And, just as before, he finds them asleep.

He had reproached them already: “Could you not keep vigil

with me for one hour? Stay awake and pray so as not to give

way to temptation: the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”

(Mt 26,40-41). But even that warning had not kept them

awake. Peter, James and John did not know how to respond

to his call to prayer addressed to them as they entered

Gethsemane. The words Jesus now speaks for the second and

third time become a reproach, a reproach of concern to every

disciple of Christ. In one way the Church still hears those

same words: the reproach addressed to the three Apostles is

accepted by the Church as if it were addressed to herself,

and she tries to fill the gap left by that lost hour when Jesus

remained completely alone in Gethsemane. The Apostles did

not know how to respond to the appeal to share the prayer of

the Redeemer, and they left him completely alone. This

showed that the mystery of redemption required the Son to

remain alone in intimate converse with the Father. This total

solitude creates a dimension fully appropriate to the divine

mystery, which at the same time is a human activity on the

part of the Son of man.

And now the Church still seeks to recover that hour in

Gethsemane—the hour lost by Peter, James and John—so

as to compensate for the Master’s lack of companionship

which increased his soul’s suffering. It is impossible to

reconstruct that hour in all its historical veracity: it belongs

in the past and remains for ever in the eternity of God

himself. Yet the desire to recover it has become a real need

for many hearts, especially for those who live as fully as they

can the mystery of the divine heart. The Lord Jesus allows us

to meet him in that hour - which on the human plane is long

since past beyond recall - and, just as he did then, invites us

to share the prayer of his heart: “Cogitationes cordis eius in

generationem et generationem, ut eruat a morte animas

eorum et alat eos in fame” (Entrance antiphon, Mass of the

Sacred Heart of Jesus). And when “from generation to

generation” we enter into the designs of his heart, from that

sharing there flows the mystical unity of the Body of Christ.

How rich in meaning that “Stay awake!” now becomes:

“Stay awake, so as not to give way to temptation!” Christ

hands over to us that hour of great trial, which always has

been an hour of trial for his disciples and his Church.

“I am the vine ...” says the Lord, and these words are

most appropriate to the situation in Gethsemane. “I am the

vine and you are the branches ... As the branch cannot of

itself bear fruit unless it remains joined to the vine, so also

not one of you, unless you remain in me...” (Jn 15,5). “lam

the true vine, and my Father is the vine-dresser. Every

branch in me that bears no fruit he cuts right out: and those

which do bear fruit he prunes, so that they may bear more

fruit still” (Jn 15,1-2).

The prayer of Gethsemane goes on to this day. Faced with

all the trials that man and the Church have to undergo, there

is a constant need to return to Gethsemane and undertake

that sharing in the prayer of Christ our Lord. That prayer—

according to the standards of human reckoning—remains

unanswered. But at the same time, in virtue of the principle:

“My thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not

your ways” (Is 55,8), it marks the beginning of the great

victory, the beginning of the redemptive work on which man

and the world still draw and always will draw, because the

Redemption makes manifest the nature and extent of God’s

love for mankind and for the world (cf Jn 3,16).

And so the prayer of Gethsemane is not left unanswered.

Karol Wojtyla, Sign of Contradiction (1977) p. 147-153