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Agony in the Garden | Into the Mysteries of the Rosary Ep 12 | Fr. James Brent, O.P. · Into the Mysteries of the Rosary

• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Brothers and sisters, welcome to Into the Mysteries of the Rosary, a mini series of the podcast contemplata.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus came not only to snatch us from the fires of hell, but to give us something better than all the goods of this world combined.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ came to give us Himself.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: He came to reveal to us His amazing life in God, His life as the eternal Son of the Father, His life in the Spirit of Love.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: What is more, He came not only to tell us about His life, but actually to share His life with you and me, so that by His grace you and I might come to live something of the life of the eternal Son of God for ourselves.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Such is God's mysterious plan of adoption.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus came into this world to fill us with the Spirit, to make us children of the light, and to lead us home to the Father's house.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yet He accomplished all these purposes not just in any way, but according to God's mysterious plan.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: According to God's mysterious plan, Jesus was to accomplish it all by freely going to the cross.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: There, on the cross, he revealed the greatest love the world has ever known.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus, the eternal Son of God, freely offered himself in sacrifice for the sins of the whole human race.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: We come now to the sorrowful mysteries, the mysteries of our Lord's passion and death, and they are one and all mysteries of his love.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: The first sorrowful mystery is the agony in the garden.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: We know the scene, perhaps too well.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: After the Last Supper, Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him into the garden of Gethsemane.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: He told them his soul was overwhelmed with sorrow.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: He urged them to stay awake, watch, and pray.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus himself entered into prayer.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: He turned to the Father.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus looked directly at the whole course of torture and death that lay ahead for him, and he placed it all before the Father.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Our Lord suffered a sorrow and distress so great that his sweat became like great drops of blood.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, his disciples dozed off.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, where are you in the scene of the agony in the garden?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Where are you in your life right now?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you identify with Jesus.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you are overwhelmed with terrible trials and sorrows in your life.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you are full of fear.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: What did Jesus do with his overwhelming distress?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: He took it all to the Father in confidence.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Have you done the same?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Have you set it all before the Father?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was indeed overwhelmed with sorrow, but he also knew the Father had a plan, a good plan, an amazing plan.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: The twelfth chapter of the letter to the Hebrews says it was for the joy set before him that he endured the cross.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was not only the impending torment our Lord had before his eyes in the garden of Gethsemane, it was also the impending joy, the resurrection.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: The point is important because when we are suffering and enduring trials, the temptation is to stop short at noticing the pain.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: The tendency is to fixate on evil, to see only the affliction, nothing further and nothing more.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yet our Lord did not do so in his agony.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: When our Lord went through his agony in the garden, he was sorrowful indeed, sorrowful even unto death, but he did not just wallow in sorrow.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: He faced the pain with brutal honesty before God, but he did not stop short at seeing just the pain.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: He did not fixate on evil.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Rather, he turned his eyes to the Father, the Father of Lights, and he knew his father had a plan, a plan far greater than all the horrors of the passion.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, but not my will, thy will be done.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: When he said these words, Jesus revealed his freedom at work.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: The passion and death of the Lord was not just something that happened to him.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Rather, Jesus freely chose to endure the passion and the cross.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: When we meditate on the sorrowful mysteries, we meditate on a voluntary passion and a voluntary death.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: No one takes my life from me, Jesus said.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: I lay it down of my own accord.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it up again.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: In the garden of Gethsemane, when they came to arrest him, Peter drew a sword and cut off the ear of the high priest's servant.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Put your sword back in its sheath, Jesus said to him.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that I cannot call upon my Father, and he will not provide me at this moment with more than twelve legions of angels?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: The point was to tell Peter and us that Jesus did not have to go to the cross.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: He could have gotten away, he could have escaped.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: He did it many times before.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: More than once in the Gospels Jesus was surrounded by a crowd that wanted to throw him headlong over a cliff or stone him.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: But how do those passages end?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: He passed through the midst of them.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: A mysterious saying.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps he was assisted by angels at those points, but the lesson of his previous escapes is clear.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: He can get away from angry mobs any time he wants.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: When the hour of his death comes, his death will be voluntary.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, Jesus made a choice to go to the cross, and it was a choice born from love.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: What drove him to the cross was not the angry mob or the Roman soldiers, but the fire of love burning in his heart.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: For in the garden of Gethsemane Jesus received a special infusion of love in his heart, moving him freely to bear it all.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: He chose to endure all the rigors of his passion and crucifixion, out of love for the Father and love for you and me.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: For he loved those who were his own in the world, and he loved them to the end.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, but not my will, thy will be done.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: These are the words of Jesus at prayer.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: At prayer during the most decisive hour of his life.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: In that hour he faced a choice.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: He faced the choice to prefer himself and his own life on earth to the will of the Father, or to prefer the will of the Father to Himself and His own life on earth.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus preferred the will of the Father.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: He chose to go to the cross out of obedience to the Father's call to lay down his life for us.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Love and obedience these two traits, more than anything else, characterize the heart of Jesus in his passion and death.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was because he loved the Father that Jesus obeyed him, and offered himself in sacrifice for you, for me, and for us all.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Once upon a time, in the Garden of Eden, sin entered the world by a free choice.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in the Garden of Gethsemane, the salvation of the world begins by another free choice.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: The sin of Adam was a choice contrary to the will of God.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: The cross of Jesus was a choice according to the will of God.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: The old Adam disobeyed God.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: The new Adam, Jesus, obeyed the Father.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: When the old Adam fell, he preferred his own will to the will of God.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: When the new Adam set about saving us, he united his will to the will of the Father.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: The old Adam failed to love.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: But no one has ever loved like Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And no one ever will.