What caused Jesus to agonize in the Garden?

[momor]

Do you think the agony Jesus experienced in Gethsemane was something more than His loneliness and dread over the coming crucifixtion? If so, what do you think it was?

 

[crazzeto]

I’ve heard it said that because Christ was dieing for our sins, he bore the full weight of the sins of Humanity. Thus he felt pain more keenly, and suffered all the more in the Garden due to this. The Priest who did the video commentary for the CSS Program’s study of Revelation (Apocolypse of John) commented that the cup Christ drank from is essentially the cup of human iniquities described in Revelation 14, if you haven’t read it yet you should, it’s very powerful:

drbo.org/chapter/73014.htm

9 And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice: If any man shall adore the beast and his image, and receive his character in his forehead, or in his hand; 10 He also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mingled with pure wine in the cup of his wrath, and shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the sight of the holy angels, and in the sight of the Lamb.

…

19 And the angel thrust in his sharp sickle into the earth, and gathered the vineyard of the earth, and cast it into the great press of the wrath of God: 20 And the press was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the press, up to the horses’ bridles, for a thousand and six hundred furlongs.

 

[Spencerian]

Do you think the agony Jesus experienced in Gethsemane was something more than His loneliness and dread over the coming crucifixtion? If so, what do you think it was?

Hi.

Rather than giving my POV about the Agony in the Garden, this Catholic Update article sums up what Christ had to do as part of his human nature. While still fully God, Christ’s humility to His Father by becoming human also subjected Him to contemplate death in human terms, but with perfect submission of His human will (“not by my will, but by Your will”). At least, that’s what I took from this well-written explanation.

 

[Ron_Conte]

I speculate that the human nature of Jesus was temporarily prevented from the Beatific Vision during His Passion and Crucifixion, so that He could suffer fully.

 

[Matt_707]

Hi my friend,

Can you imagine having not only all the sins of humanity on your shoulders, but also all the guilt and shame of everyone. Almost unbearable to think about. & I thought it was tough examining my own conscience. Lawlz.

PAX CHRISTI

-Matt

 

[Advocatus_Fidei]

It was the pain of all the sins of mankind which he bore in Himself. That includes all your sins and mine, we are the cause of His suffering.

 

[Monica4316]

I read in a book that Jesus suffered also because He saw all the sins of the world and that even though He would die, there would still be people who would reject salvation

 

[Ron_Conte]

The human nature of Jesus is finite, so His human nature had a finite ability to know our sins and to suffer due to our sins.

 

[jpy15026]

Snippits from something I read a few months ago

• Christ is simultaneously and perfectly conscious of every human act, internal as well as external, of every human being, past, present, and future. Therefore, from the moment of His conception in Mary’s womb, this all-embracing consciousness conditions His entire public ministry: His recorded words, emotional responses, and internal and external acts.
• From this first Christological premise, we see that in the Gospels, all of Christ’s words and deeds are “conditioned” and “influenced” by the full existential complex of my own needs and my own human personal response. In other words, I am in His mind. He sees me. He addresses me. The Gospels are, indeed, an* historical* record of the past, but in this manner, a connatural encounter is effected here and now. Christ, in His historical agony, for instance, is affected by* me*, both as an individual and as a member of His Body, either toward consolation by my sympathy, my conversion, and my adherence, or toward a sharpening of His agony by my indifference, my sin.
• Gethsemane may well illustrate what is meant. The mental agony of Jesus simultaneously registered in His consciousness the love and hatred, the fidelity and apostasy, the salvation *and *damnation of *every *soul from Adam to the parousia.(which includes me,so now "I am “living” in the Garden)
• The same dimension of awareness enters into *every *word and act of Jesus the Gospels record. I say “act,” because an act is also dramatically and efficiently a “word.” Therefore, my whole existential situation and being share in prompting and formulating each word of Christ in its final Gospel expression. Thus, *I *am actively involved in this “word” that never passes away. I live in and act upon the pages of Scripture. And what we label “I” here embraces every “I” of *every *human soul, created or yet to be created, however *ignored *or *unappreciated *by history that soul may be.
  • Christ transcends time. In the divine hypostasis of Christ, there is no past or future, only an eternal all-comprehensive now*.* If our first premise moves us “backward” toward an engagement with the past, this premise moves those same historical events “forward” to our own moment in time.

I now live in the Garden!
.

 

[Moro_Rock]

Do you think the agony Jesus experienced in Gethsemane was something more than His loneliness and dread over the coming crucifixtion? If so, what do you think it was?

Jesus was baptised although he was sinless and had no need of repentance.
Hence , at his baptism he identified himself with sinful mankind.

Now , in the Garden as he prepares for his Passion and Death he once again identifies himself with sinful mankind.
He is confronted with all the sins of every man, woman and child throughout history, including sins not yet committed. Like Samson, he reaches up and pulls the whole edifice of sin and guilt onto himself.
It is not difficult to understand what effect this had on his Holy and Sinless nature.And, as he seems to have been abandoned by his Father he cracks under the strain…

 

[Joe_Kelley]

I suspect that the devil also tempted Him with the knowledge of how many would reject His sacrifice; making His suffering to be in vain.

 

[Benadam]

I think a view into this mystery is His prayer. " If it be possible let this cup pass"

It was Jesus’ policy to not use His divine power for Himself. He was about to do something that wasn’t humanly possible. Conquer death humanity inherited in the Garden. Jesus’ human knowledge was experimental. Knowing the outcome of an experience doesn’t cancel the anxiety of going through it. Jesus’ nature was to be fully a gift of self to other. His divine nature would not ease the pain. This is why the angels comforted Him imo.

The greater the life the morer painfull the loss. The greater the love the more painfull if scorned. With Him there is no greater range.

He called it a Baptism. It was His greatest suffering that would accomplish something not humanly possible yet His divine nature wouldn’t be of any advantage.

 

[KyivAndrew]

Apart from all listed above, Saint Catherine Emmerich in writing of the Lord’s Passion wrote that angels showed Christ in the Garden a vision of all the sufferings that He would have to endure in order to expiate sin as the debt of the whole human race had to be paid by that humanity alone which was sinless. She writes: “… it appeared to me that the Divine Will of our Lord withdrew in some sort into the Eternal Father, in order to permit all those sufferings which his human will besought his Father to spare him, to weigh upon his humanity alone…our Redeemer [had to] overcome that violent repugnance of human suffering and death which constitutes a portion of all sufferings.” Anne Catherine then goes on to mention that Christ had to be tempted by Satan here as well, and that later the angels displayed before the eyes of the Lord, “to its fullest extent and in all bitterness, the expiatory suffering which would be required to satisfy Divine Justice.”

She writes: “I felt that Jesus, in delivering himself up to Divine Justice in satisfaction for the sins of the world, caused his divinity to return, is some sort, into the bosom of the Holy Trinity, concentrated himself, so to speak, in his pure, loving and innocent humanity, and strong only in his ineffable love, gave it up to anguish and suffering. He fell on his face, overwhelmed with unspeakable sorrow, and all the sins of the world displayed themselves before him, under countless forms and in all their deformity.” Of course, this is private revelation of a saint, which the Catholic Church allows for us to strengthen our faith.

We must also recall that the Agony in the Garden is one of the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. In it, we are to remember in the words of Catholic Answers: “Christ is shoulder to shoulder with us in our human journey… look at a crucifix and reflect on his agony in the garden—which was really the agony in his mind. Anxiety is a mind thing. He suffered it to the point of sweating blood. He is with you in this and he can put your mind to rest.” So that whatever anxiety and horrendous fear we come across in life, know that Christ has already gone through this before us, and is with us now in our agonies.
catholic.com/thisrock/quickquestions/keyword/anxiety