Professional Documents
Culture Documents
5
- He naturally shrank from
pain, no less than we do.
After all, He was truly
human:
The “If you are willing, take this chalice
Suffering from me.” But having said this, He
promptly added, “Nevertheless let
of Christ your will be done, not mine.”
Thereupon, “an angel appeared to
Him, coming from heaven, to give
Him strength” (Luke 22:42-43).
6
The first part of
Christ’s prayer
was the
“If you are willing, take expression of His
this chalice from me.” human feelings,
the instinctive
and involuntary
dread of pain.
The second part
was the
manifestation of
“Nevertheless let your His patience, the
will be done, not mine.” voluntary
acceptance of
what His natural
feelings dreaded
- And the appearance of
the angel came after
He had spoken His
resignation to the will
of the Father.
“an angel appeared to
- The angel, be it noted,
Him, coming from heaven, did not remove the
to give Him strength” pain but provided Him
with additional
strength for His will to
bear the suffering with
patient resignation to
the will of God.
In the soul was the
pain of rejection and
humiliation, of
opposition by His
enemies and
abandonment by His
friends, of a sense of
failure at seeing so
In the body was the many clamoring for
pain caused by His death, who only a
emotional reaction to few days before were
praising Him to the
Christ’s
being scourged and
crowned with thorns,
skies, of the cruel sufferings were
ingratitude from the
being forced to carry a very people for whom always both in
heavy cross and then He had done so much,
nailed to the Cross and even to working the body and in
allowed to die by numerous miracles in
their favor.
the soul.
having the body totally
drained of its blood.
- Among the Jews, no form of death was
considered more disgraceful than
crucifixion
- And among the pagan Romans, no form of
execution was considered more painful
than to be crucified.
15