He could have walked away free, with the soldiers and His enemies prone upon the ground, but it was the “Hour” when Love fettered Himself to unfetter man.
Self-sacrifice seeks no vengeance. Judas and the others had no power to capture Him unless He freely delivered Himself into their hands. Giving His enemies power to stand, He, as the Good Shepherd, had only one concern, that of His own sheep:
If I am the man you are looking for,
Let these others go free.
John 18:8
He must go to sacrifice alone. The Old Testament ordered that the high priest must be alone when he offered sacrifice:
No one must be there in the tabernacle
From the time when the High Priest
Enters the inner sanctuary, to make intercession
For himself and his family and
The whole people of Israel,
Till the time when He comes out again.
Leviticus 16:17
This was His Hour, but not the hour of the Apostles. Later on, they would suffer and die in His name, but presently they could not understand Redemption until the Spirit had enlightened them. He would tread the wine press alone. They were not yet in a spiritual condition to die with Him; in a few moments they would all desert Him. Furthermore, they could not suffer for Christ until He had first suffered for them. The whole purpose of His redemptive death, in a certain sense, was to say to all men, “Let these others go free.”
On entering the garden, the Savior had told Peter, James, and John “to watch and pray.” Peter now decided to substitute action for prayer. . . . Though Peter’s zeal was honest, well-meaning and impulsive, yet it was mistaken in the choice of means. Our Blessed Lord first touched the ear of the wounded man and restored it; then, turning to Peter, He said:
Put thy sword back into its sheath.
Am I not to drink that cup
Which My Father Himself has appointed for Me?
John 18:11
Here in contrast were set the sword and the cup; the sword wins by slaying, the cup by submission. Not the impatience of the violent, but the patience of saints was to be His way of winning souls. . . . It was a cup which contained the Father’s will that, in love for men, He should offer His life that they might be restored again to Divine sonship. Nor did He say that a sentence was laid upon Him to undergo His Passion, but rather that He Himself out of love could not do otherwise. “Am I not to drink that cup?” Furthermore, those who arbitrarily and presumptuously resorted to violence, Our Lord told Peter, would feel that violence itself. Revenge brings its own punishment. Bodies can be conquered with unsheathed swords but those same swords often turn against those who wield them:
All those who take up the sword
Will perish by the sword.
Matthew 26:52
. . .
Dost thou doubt that if I call upon My Father,
Even now, He will send more than
Twelve legions of angels to My side?
Matthew 26:53
. . . But His refusal to summon the angels was not an involuntary bowing to a fate, or a submitting to pain that He might be purified. It was rather a quiet surrender of some of His own rights; a voluntary abstinence from the use of superior force for the sake of others, a standing unchained with perfect power to go away, and yet submitting for love of mankind—such is sacrifice at white heat.
. . .
Looking beyond all secondary causes, such as Pilate and Annas, the Romans and the Jews, Our Lord saw not enemies to be defeated by a sword, but a cup offered by His Father. Love was the motive and spring of His Sacrifice as He said:
God so loved the world, That He gave up His only-begotten Son,
So that those who believe in Him,
May not perish, but have eternal life.
John 3:16
. . . The love of the Lamb had to be free; to compel the Lamb of God to suffer would be the height of injustice. Hence the affirmation of power at the moment He delivered Himself into their hands. What God permitted was as equally His will as what He appointed. Here Our Lord refused to see the hand of His enemies in His death, but passed immediately to the idea of the cup His Father gave Him. In that love He reposed even though the cup for the moment was bitter, for good was to come from it.
Ven. Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ (1958), Ch. 42: "The Kiss That Blistered"