Great Lent-Week 1

Jesus's Agony in the Garden-Meditation by Luigi Giussani

“Now my soul is sorrowful; and what must I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour [faced with the thought of sacrifice, the thought of death, of self-denial…]’? But it is for this that I have come to this hour [for this, for this condition have I been chosen, called, lovingly taught by the mystery of the Father, by the charity of the Son, by the warm light of the Spirit. Now my soul is sorrowful and what must I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour’? ‘Take away this condition, Father, take away this condition.’ Must I say this? But it is precisely for this that I have come to this hour!].” Thus I can say at the end, “Father, glorify Your name [glorify Your will, bring about, realize Your plan], which I do not comprehend [because He did not comprehend the great injustice]. Father, glorify Your name in front of which I stand in fear and trembling, in obedience–that is to say, in love. My life is Your plan, it is Your will.”

How many times–praying to the Spirit and the Virgin Mary–will we have to reread this passage in order to identify with the most lucid and fascinating instant in which the consciousness of the Man Christ, Jesus, expressed itself. We can come upon this by surprise, from its deepest recesses to the highest peaks of His example of love for Being, of respect for the objectivity of Being, of love for His origin and His destiny, and for the contents of the plan of time, of history. “Father, if possible, let me not die; however, not my but Your will be done.” This is the supreme application of our acknowledgment of Mystery, adhering to the Man-Christ kneeling and sweating blood from the pores of His skin in His agony in Gethsemane–the condition for being true in a relationship is sacrifice.