Meditation on First Sorrowful mystery

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The Agony in the Garden

Jesus is anticipating having to do something he doesn’t want to do, but he knows it is a great act of love. He asks if he can be free of this obligation but accepts his father’s will, even though it is unnecessary to do it.

People often consider the mass to be unnecessary to show our love to God, but it is one of the great ways to do so and one God desires of us to do. It is a ceremony to show our appreciation for God and that he is most important. Like all ceremonies, how much love we show is dependent on us. Do we care for, like, admire, and desire God?
 
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This oversimplifies the extant of His agony. Sweating blood…His soul in a sadness of death…
 
People need to start somewhere. Little submissions to God’s will lead to bigger ones.

If Jesus could go through this agony of sweating blood, surely people can sit through a one-hour Mass in comfortable surroundings.
 
I follow the recommendation of St. John Paul II when praying the rosary of reading a scriptural passage before each decade. I actually enjoy praying a scriptural rosary in which I use a scriptural passage for each Hail Mary.
One of the techniques I learned praying for praying the rosary comes from a session for Faith Formation teachers. Add a word or phrase, called a clause, after the name of Jesus in the Hail Mary.
The Clause I use for the First Sorrowful Mystery is “in the Garden.” The Garden can refer to the garden of my heart that needs tending to be more receptive to God’s Word. We do need to be more attentive to God’s Word as proclaimed during Mass.
It can be the actual Garden at Gethsemane, where the disciples had difficulty staying awake. They slept while Our Lord prayed. We are reminded " the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak."
The purpose of the clause is to keep the mind focused on Christ while meditating on the mystery of the rosary. It definitely does help.
Mass is a Eucharistic celebration.a celebration of thanksgiving. I have never equated it with the Sorrowful Mystery. However, if meditating on the Sorrowful Mystery increases a person’s appetite for the Eucharist, the source and summit of our Faith, why hinder that desire?
Christ died for each of us. During the homily for this 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, my parish priest had us take out our missalettes and pay attention to the words of the Consecration. We hear these words every time we attend Mass, but how many Catholics understand the significance? We have been Baptized. Our sins are forgiven.
“Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

The Old Testament tells us that life is in the blood. Christ himself said, “I came that they may have life, life to the full.” and again. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
 
I combine My Complete Rosary with Scriptural Meditations.
During the week, I use My Complete Rosary for the beginning meditation for each decade, as well as the beginning prayer for the decade. On Saturdays, Our Lady’s Days, when I pray the complete rosary, I turn to the back of the book to pray the 20 mysteries using the scriptural passages for each Hail Mary.

Scriptural Meditations from acta publications provides Scriptural meditations for the Divine Mercy Chaplet, Franciscan Crown, Seven Sorrow, and the Dominican Rosary.
After I read the Opening Decade Scripture passage and prayer, I pray the scripture passage for each Hail Mary from Scriptural Meditations..
In the past, I have posted the single word, phrase that I use after each time I say the name of Jesus.

When I attended a retreat at the Trappist Monastery in Gonyer, GA I picked up a small book simply titled “Praying the Rosary.” It too has just the simple mysteries, followed by a the mysteries with a Scriptural passage before each decade. It does not have meditations for each of the Hail Mary’s, although it does have the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The other two books mentioned both contain the Litany of Loretta, which I pray after the 20 mysteries. My Complete Rosary has St. Louis de Montfort’s prayer before the Rosary.
 
St. Catherine of Siena once said that one of the sufferings was having to wait so long before being able to redeem man.
 
We are all works in progress. I would rather be a tax collector than a Pharisee.

Once again, our Lord desired that Peter, James and John remain close to Him. Our evangelical and fundamentalist accusers seem not to notice this, but our Lord used prayer repetitions (at least three times using the same words) to His Father. Do we suppose that the Father did not hear Him the forst two times? The earth, brought into being by the Son, was now soil on the face of the Son, Who humbled Himself that we might be exalted. Before His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, His face had been “set like flint” to go to His death. He displayed this also in the garden. “Rise, let us be going! See? My betrayer is at hand.”

And they had no answer for Him…
 
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