AGONY OF JESUS CHRIST
With “agony of Jesus Christ” is understood that immense accumulation of sufferings to which Jesus was subjected in the Garden of Gethsemane, when He began the drama of the Passion. The facts are narrated by the three Synoptic Evangelists (Mt. 26:36-46; Mk. 14:32-42; Lk. 22:40-46). Luke recounts it more briefly, but in compensation he alone includes the appearance of the comforting angel and the sweat of blood. The word *agony* (ἀγωνία), used by Lk. 22:44, which originally in Greek meant exercises and contests, especially in the struggles of the stadium, later came to signify more generally trepidation and anguish in the face of imminent and most grievous afflictions and pains, particularly as death approached.
Three are the salient points in the evangelical narration of the agony of Jesus Christ: the fullness of the Savior’s suffering, His prayer, and the sweat of blood.
### 1. SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST
He suffered mortal sadness (“My soul is sorrowful even unto death,” Mk. 14:34); terror and amazement, weariness and disgust (“coepit pavere et taedere,” Mk. 14:33). Catholic doctrine requires that the full truth and reality of Christ’s pains and sufferings be admitted. “In Christ the patient, true and sensible pain occurred, caused by harm of a corporeal order; there also occurred the internal pain, which is commonly called sadness, arising from the apprehension (sensible or intellectual) of something harmful.” Thus St. Thomas Aquinas (*Summa Theologica*, III, q. 46, a. 6). To understand, however, how Christ bore such sufferings, it is necessary to keep in mind two observations imposed by Catholic doctrine. The first: He suffered because He willed to suffer. Jesus Christ had perfect dominion over His soul and body. If pain arose in Him and reached even extraordinary intensity, it was because He disposed that it should arise and reach that determined degree of vehemence; nor did any movement ever anticipate reason, disturb it, or impede it, or in any way delay the free will in the execution of what was fitting. The second observation: even amid such immense anguish, Jesus Christ, at the highest summit of His spirit, enjoyed, as the blessed comprehendors do, the essential beatitude, consisting in the intuitive vision of God and the love and joy that result therefrom. This is the simultaneousness of supreme joy and supreme pain—one of the most mysterious depths of the psychology of the Incarnate Word. The beatific fruition of God, which takes place in the higher part of the supernatural spirit elevated by the light of glory, did not overflow in Jesus Christ, during His mortal and passible life, into the lower part of the spiritual soul, nor into the body and sensitive faculties. The motives that determined such acute sufferings were: the imminence of the Passion and death, which Christ’s human intellect clearly saw before Him, in all the details of their atrocious reality; the sins of men, past, present, and future, all of them clearly perceived and evaluated one by one in what they contain of offense to the divine Majesty and harm to souls and bodies; the inexpressible affliction that His own pains and death would cause to the Most Holy Virgin; the spiritual ruin of His own countrymen, the Jews; the abandonment and dispersion of the Apostles; the sufferings that the Church would undergo, sufferings foreseen and penetrated by Christ.
### 2. THE PRAYER OF JESUS CHRIST
“Father! All things are possible to Thee. Remove this cup from Me. Yet not what I will, but what Thou wilt” (Mk. 14:36). This prayer is a classic text for establishing that in Christ there was a human will, as indicated by the words “not what I will,” besides the divine will. Two wills corresponding to the two natures, divine and human. The same prayer makes manifest how in Christ’s human will there were two tendencies and movements: the natural tendency, which shrank from what naturally repelled it, such as death and physical and moral pains; and the rational tendency, by which He embraced death and pains, inasmuch as they were willed by God and ordained for the redemption of men. Between the two tendencies—which St. Thomas calls *voluntas naturae* and *voluntas rationis*—there was no true contrariety. Each pursued its own object, without the *voluntas naturae* in any way hindering the movement of the *voluntas rationis*. Moreover—and this is decisive—the divine will of Christ and the rational human will willed that the natural will and sensibility should develop their own tendency, according to the principle enunciated by St. John Damascene, which dominates the entire subject: “The Word permitted that Christ, in His human nature, should act and suffer what is proper to it” (*De Fide Orthodoxa*, III, 15: PG 94, 1060).
### 3. THE SWEAT OF BLOOD
“And His sweat became as drops of blood, running down upon the ground” (Lk. 22:44). Catholic exegesis commonly holds that it was truly sanguineous sweat, different from ordinary natural sweat. Nor need it be considered of preternatural origin. The phenomenon of bloody sweat is known in medicine. The profound emotion of Christ’s soul provoked an abnormal disturbance in the physical organism, to the point of causing the rupture of the capillary vessels.
The appearance of the angel must be considered, according to the sacred text, as real and not merely imaginary. It is difficult to specify the nature and manner of the comfort brought by the angel to Christ. He did not bring comfort that Christ was not capable of procuring for Himself; He did not reveal truths or events, nor suggest motives of consolation that Christ did not already perfectly know. He could only bring reasons and considerations such as to induce the higher part of Christ’s soul to come to the aid of the lower part and bring it some relief. And Christ willed to receive comfort from an angel, to demonstrate the reality of His sufferings and the truth of His human nature, essentially inferior to angelic nature.
The two verses of Lk. 22:43-44, which narrate the appearance of the angel and the sweat of blood, are missing in various codices, including the Vatican Codex—a codex of great authority—in some minuscule manuscripts and in some ancient versions of the Bible. They are, however, supported by the great majority of both uncial and minuscule manuscripts and a good number of versions. They are already found in St. Justin and St. Irenaeus and are frequently cited by later Fathers. About forty among ancient and less ancient Fathers testify to the authenticity of the verses in question. From the critical study of written documents, it must be concluded that Lk. 22:43-44 is an integral and authentic part of the Gospel. It is easily understood that a mistaken respect led to the omission of a difficult text, which at first glance might have seemed less worthy of the person of Jesus. Less easily understood, or not understood at all, are the reasons why it would have been inserted into the evangelical narrative.
From a strictly dogmatic point of view, it is not permissible to doubt that Lk. 22:43-44 belongs to inspired Scripture, of which God is the author. The Council of Trent in its fourth session (cf. Denz.-U., 784) defined that the complete books of the Old and New Testaments, with all their parts, as read in the Catholic Church and found in the ancient Vulgate, must be held as sacred and canonical. Now, among these parts is certainly included Lk. 22:43-44, as is evident from explicit declarations made during the preparatory discussions of the decree of the fourth session. (Cf. *Concilium Tridentinum Diariorum pars prima*, ed. S. Merkle, in *Concilium Tridentinum*, Nova Collectio, I, Freiburg in Br. 1901, pp. 38, 45).
The author of Gethsemane constitutes an incomparable example and comfort for believers. It is the most human episode of the Gospel: in it the Saviour appears in the evident reality of a human nature, subject to the infirmities of other men, sin alone excepted. He experiences all the pain, in order to prove the immensity of His love and the sanctifying power of suffering. Thus He becomes the priest “faithful” and humanly “merciful,” who can “humanly” bear our infirmities. (Hebr. 2, 17-18; 4, 15).