Homily Eleven on the Passion
By St. Luke, Archbishop of Simferopol and All Crimea
(Delivered on April 1, 1951)
By St. Luke, Archbishop of Simferopol and All Crimea
(Delivered on April 1, 1951)
When our Lord and God Jesus Christ ascended Mount Tabor to reveal His Divine glory there, then He took with Him three beloved disciples - Peter, James and John - and was transfigured before them, and showed His glory to them.
The hour of His terrible and indescribable suffering has come, and again He takes with Him the same three disciples - Peter, James and John - to the Garden of Gethsemane, departs with them from the rest of the disciples, orders them to watch and pray, and He Himself departs from them within a stone's throw and begins His painful last prayer to God.
If this time the Lord considered it necessary to take three disciples so that they would again be His witnesses, it means that what they had to see, hear and testify to was extremely important, no less great than His Transfiguration on Mount Tabor.
Thus, we understand that the spiritual struggle that our Lord Jesus Christ experienced while praying to His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane was the greatest and at the same time the most difficult and terrible of the events of His life.
Do not think that only on the cross, in indescribable suffering, did the Lord endure His terrible torment. Know that His torment, even more terrible than His suffering on the cross, began here in the Garden of Gethsemane, by the light of the moon.
Oh, how He suffered! Oh, how He was tormented! Oh, how He cried out to His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane: “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; however, not as I want, but as You want” (Matthew 26:33).
Daring people may think: "What cowardice! Why did He ask the Father to have the cup of suffering passed from Him, if it was because of this suffering that He came into the world?" Bold people even say that the Lord did not experience any suffering on the cross.
In the early times of Christianity there were heretics, the Docetists, who taught that the body of Jesus was not real, but a ghostly body (dokein, “to seem”; hence the name Docetist). They, of course, while teaching so wickedly, were confident that the Lord Jesus Christ did not endure any suffering, for He did not have an authentic and true human body, though we know, we are deeply convinced that He was a true man, as well as a true God.
We know that with His body He endured indescribable suffering and terrible torment on the cross.
We know this. But not everyone delves into what the Lord experienced in His heart. Not everyone knows why His prayer to God the Father was so painful. Not everyone knows why bloody sweat dripped from His face.
And I must explain this to you.
When does bloody sweat drip from a person's face? When do people pray with tears of blood?
This is not a metaphor - this is reality, that they cry tears of blood, that sweat drops which is bloody. This happens when human torment reaches such a terrible intensity that no other torment can compare with it.
Hence, already from the fact that bloody sweat dripped from the face of the Savior, we know how terrible, how immense His mental suffering was compared to physical suffering.
What was so frightening? Why did Christ our God languish so much in anticipation of His suffering on the cross?
Think about it, if one of you had to take upon yourself the sins of a hundred people around you and give an answer for them before God, how terrified you would be, how the sins of others would weigh heavily on you, for which you must give an answer to God.
Don’t you know that the Lord Jesus Christ took upon Himself the sins of the whole world, of all mankind? Have you never heard the words of the great prophet Isaiah: “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed” (Isa. 53:5).
Haven’t you read what was written in the first letter of the Apostle Peter: “He Himself bore our sins in His Body on the tree, so that we, having been delivered from sins, might live for righteousness; by His stripes you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24).
Thus, already in the Garden of Gethsemane He languished and suffered under the terrible weight of the sins of the whole world. He was pressed unspeakably, unbearably by the sins of the world, which He took upon Himself, for which He had to become a sacrifice to the justice of God before God, for only He and no one else could atone for the sins of the whole world.
That is why bloody sweat dripped from His forehead, that is why He suffered so much, praying to His Father: “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me ...” (Matthew 26:39).
And immediately He spoke differently: “However, not as I want, but as You want.” – He surrendered Himself entirely to the will of God, and his sins crushed Him, tormented Him, tortured Him, and He fell exhausted under the weight of these sins.
The great saint Blessed Augustine says this: “Nowhere does the greatness and holiness of Jesus amaze me so much as here. I would not have known the greatness of His benefits if He had not revealed to me what they cost Him.”
We would not know the full greatness of Christ’s sacrifice if we did not know what He experienced in the terrible hour of His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.
"And His disciples were sleeping..." What does it mean that they were sleeping? Why were they sleeping? The simple explanation is that they were very tired from the midnight march across the Kidron River, were in weakness and, as the Gospel of Luke says, were overwhelmed with sadness - they slept out of sadness.
But let’s think about whether there were other, higher mysterious reasons for the fact that they were sleeping, whether it was arranged by God?
It is very likely that it was. God probably wanted them to only catch a glimpse of the suffering that Jesus experienced in the Garden of Gethsemane. Perhaps all the terrible, bottomless depth of Jesus’ prayer should be hidden from the eyes of the world. Probably so...
But still, they were needed as witnesses, even if very incomplete, of the Gethsemane suffering of the soul of Jesus.
They slept, but, waking up three times at the word of Jesus, they, of course, did not immediately fall asleep again and in the bright light of the full moon they saw Jesus praying and heard the terrible words of His prayer.
For if not so, how would the evangelist know about what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane, how would he write what we read, how would they know about the drops of bloody sweat dripping from His forehead, how would they know the words of His prayer?
They were needed as witnesses: on Mount Tabor they were witnesses of His Divine glory, in the Garden of Gethsemane they were witnesses of the entire abyss of the suffering of His soul before He ascended to the cross.
Therefore, remember that in the Garden of Gethsemane the first and, perhaps, the most terrible part of Christ’s suffering took place, for on the cross He behaved much more cheerfully.
Let us bow with fear and trembling before this immeasurable greatness of Christ’s suffering. Let us fall before the cross of Christ and sing with all our hearts: “We venerate Your Cross, O Master, and Your holy Resurrection we glorify!”
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
