MARY, OUR MOTHER

SCRIPTURE COMMENTARY #510

And going out, Jesus went, according to his custom, to the Mount of Olives. And his disciples also followed him. And when he was come to the place, he said to them: "Pray, lest ye enter into temptation." And he was withdrawn away from them a stone's cast. And kneeling down, he prayed. Saying: "Father, if thou wilt, remove this chalice from me: but yet not my will, but thine be done." And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony, he prayed the longer. And his sweat became as drops of blood, trickling down upon the ground. And when he rose up from prayer and was come to the disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow. And he said to them: "Why sleep you? Arise: pray: lest you enter into temptation." (Luke 22:39-46)

THE CAUSES OF OUR LORD'S PROFOUND SADNESS and terrible agony of mind were as follows:
2. Our Blessed Lord took the sins of men on Himself, so as to offer satisfaction to the divine justice in their stead. Now that He was on the point of completing His work of Redemption, the horrible mass of evil, abomination and guilt came before His holy soul and filled it with abhorrence and aversion. "Him, that knew no sin, for us God hath made sin, that we might be made the justice of God in Him" (2 Cor. 5:21). What a horror it must have been to the Most Holy, the Most Pure One, to feel Himself laden with the sins of the whole world, the sins of pride, lust, avarice, etc.! If sorrow for the shameful ingratitude of sin could make Magdalen and Peter weep bitter tears, what a detestation of sin must He have felt who alone knew the malice to thy full! "Jesus saw all our individual sins, and grieved over them as if He Himself had committed them, for He had taken on Himself the burden of them all. Truly, the grief of this alone would have killed Him, if He had not held back His soul, in order that He might endure still more, and drink the chalice of suffering to the very dregs. He would not die on the Mount of Olives, Because His life was to be sacrificed on Calvary; but He shed His Blood, the bloody sweat of His agony, in order to show us that sin alone, without the help of any executioner, was sufficient to strike His death-blow" (Bossuet). Many indeed are the tears which have been caused, since the Fall of our first parents, by sin and the consequences of sin, but never such tears as these; for "His sweat become as drops of blood trickling down upon the ground." No one can understand, as did our Blessed Lord, the utter malice, baseness, and ingratitude of sin. Oh, would that the sweat of blood, forced from our dear Lord's veins by His sorrow for the sins of men, could serve to make us more sorry for having sinned, and more determined to hate and avoid sin in the future!

[From 'A Practical Commentary on Holy Scripture' by Bishop Knecht, D.D.]
(1899 Douay-Rheims Bible)