D.D. 03/08/07

For my Lenten reading, I've picked up "The Passion of Jesus and Its Hidden Meaning" by Fr. James Groenings, S.J. which thusfar has been a delightfully interesting read. Here is an interesting section from Chapter II concerning the circumstances surrounding Christ's agony in the garden:

In considering the history of the Passion, we much, as much as possible, pass in review not only the chief events, but also the subordinate occurrences, even minute details narrated by the evangelists...The various outward circumstances are often full of deep mystery, and, when we penetrate into their meaning, they heighten interest in the chief event itself.

With that setup, there is then an interesting through examination of the threefold circumstances of Christ's agony: place, time, and persons. I offer you a delightfully intriguing portion an examination of place:

Christ began his passion in a garden, more precisely, in an olive-garden. When the Redeemer felt that the hout of His capture was drawing nigh, He left the Cenacle. He would not cause discomfort to the good man who had generiously opened his house to Him for the institution of the Most Holy Sacrament. He wished to spare this friend all annoyance which might come to him, were the Lord to be seized in his house. He left the city all together. Beyond its walls, in God's open country, He decided to begin and to end His Passion, to show that He shed His blood not for Jerusalem alone, but for the entire world. For the beginning of his Passion, He chose a wonderfully beautiful garden. How significant this choice was! In a garden the first Adam had committed the first sin, the sin of disobendience; therefore it was in a garden that the second Adam should say to His Father, "Not what I will, but what thou wilt." In a garden Adam, by an abuse of liberty, had plunged the entire human race into the most shameful captivity; in a garden, therefore, by the bonds of Christ our fetters were to be broken. In a garden, God had pronounced the death-penalty upon Adam; hence, in a garden Christ would take upon Himself this judgement and curse...The garden of Gethsemane was furthermore an olive garden, at least it contained quite a number of olive trees, and according to several interpreters of Holy Writ, the oil for the use of the temple was obtained here. This circumstance, again, is full of significance. "Oil illumines," says St. Bernard, "it nourishes and heals." All these effects were to be produced by the blood of Christ in the Christian temple, and that in an infinitely greater degree than by the fruit of the olive-tree in the Jewish temple. For Christ is the great olive-tree, on which the heathen were grafted, according to St. Paul the Apostle

The foregoing thought has dominated my meditation this evening both the intricies of the Sacred Scripture and the omniscience of Christ knowing the intricate symbolism in every one of his simple actions. Certainly, I had never thought before of why Christ must have left the place where He had just dined - if it was just prayer he was after, he could have accomplished that in the home itself. Instead, the foreknowledge of his coming demise and caring for his friends even through that demise adds a whole other appreciation of this subtlity.