AGONY OF JESUS CHRIST. - By "the a. of J. C." is meant 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 and Lk. 22:40-46). Luke recounts more briefly, but in compensation he has as his own the appearance of the comforting angel and the sweat of blood. The word a. (ἀγωνία) used in Lk. 22:44, which originally in Greek denoted exercises and contest, especially in the struggles of the stadium, later signified, more generally, trepidation and anguish at the imminence of most grievous afflictions and sorrows, in particular at the approach of death.
Three are the salient points in the evangelical narration of the a. of J. C.: the Savior's sorrow, his prayer, the sweat of blood.
1. SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST
He suffered mortal sadness ("My soul is very sorrowful, even to death," Mk. 14:34); terror and amazement, weariness and loathing ("coepit pavere et taedere," Mk. 14:33). Catholic doctrine requires that the full truth and reality of Christ's sorrows and sufferings be admitted. "In Christ suffering there occurred true and sensible pain, caused by harm of a bodily order; there also occurred the internal pain, which is customarily called sadness, born from the apprehension (sensible or intellectual) of something harmful." Thus St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., 3a, q. 46, a. 6). And yet, in order to understand the manner in which Christ bore such sufferings, it is fitting to keep in mind two observations imposed by Catholic doctrine. The first: he suffered because he willed to suffer. Over his soul and over his body Jesus Christ had perfect dominion. If pain arose in him and even reached extraordinary intensity, it was because He disposed that it should arise and that it should reach that determined degree of vehemence; without any movement ever anticipating reason, disturbing it or impeding it or in any way delaying the free will, in the execution of what was fitting. The second observation: even in the midst of such immeasurable anguish, Jesus Christ in the highest summit of the spirit enjoyed, like the blessed comprehenders, the essential beatitude, consisting in the intuitive vision of God and in the love and joy that result from it. This - the simultaneity of the highest joy and the highest sorrow - is 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, either into the lower part of the spiritual soul, or onto the body and the sensitive faculties. The motives that determined such acute sufferings were: the imminence of the passion and of death, which Christ's human intelligence clearly saw before itself, in all the particulars of its atrocious reality; the sins of men, past, present and future, these too all clearly perceived one by one and evaluated in what they contain of offense to the divine Majesty and of harm to soul and body; the nameless affliction that his own sorrows 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 go on to encounter, sufferings then foreseen and penetrated by Christ.
2. THE PRAYER OF JESUS CHRIST
"Father! All things are possible to Thee! Remove this cup from me. Nevertheless (let it be) 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 the words "not what I will" indicate, 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 occurred two tendencies and movements: the natural tendency, which shrank from what was naturally repugnant, such as death and physical and moral sorrows; the rational tendency, by which he embraced death and sorrows, insofar as they were willed by God and ordained to 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 - what is decisive - Christ's divine will and his rational human will willed that the natural will and the sensibility should develop their own tendency, according to the principle enunciated by St. John Damascene, which governs this entire subject: "The Word permitted that Christ in the human nature should act and suffer what is proper to it" (De Fide Orthodoxa, III, 15: PG 94, 1060).
3. THE SWEAT OF BLOOD
"Et factus est sudor eius sicut guttae sanguinis decurrentis in terram": "And his sweat became, as it were, drops of blood, which fell down upon the earth" (Lk. 22:44). Catholic exegesis commonly holds that it was truly bloody sweat, different from ordinary natural sweat. Nor is it necessary to hold it to be of preternatural origin. In medicine the phenomenon of bloody sweat is known. The profound emotion of Christ's soul provoked an anomalous disturbance in the physical organism, to the point of determining the rupture of the capillary vessels.
The appearance of the angel must be held, according to the sacred text, to be real and not merely imaginary. It is difficult to specify the nature and the manner of the comfort brought by the angel to Christ. He did not bring him comfort that He was not capable of procuring for himself; he did not manifest to him truths or events, did not suggest to him motives of consolation that He 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 the comfort from an angel, in order to demonstrate the reality of his sorrows and the truth of his human nature, essentially inferior to the 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 uncial codices, among them the Vaticanus - a codex of great authority - in some minuscules and in some ancient versions of the Bible. They have, however, in their favor, the great majority of codices both majuscule and minuscule and a good number of versions. They are found already in St. Justin and in St. Irenaeus and are frequently cited in the later Fathers. Some forty among ancient and less ancient Fathers testify to the authenticity of the verses in question. From the critical study of the written documents one must conclude that Lk. 22:43-44 was an integral and authentic part of the Gospel. It is quite understandable that a misguided respect led to the omission of a difficult text, which at first sight could seem less worthy of the person of Jesus. It is less understandable, or not understandable at all, for what motives it would have been inserted into the evangelical narration.
From a strictly dogmatic point of view it is not lawful to doubt that Lk. 22:43-44 belongs to inspired Scripture, of which God is the author. The Council of Trent in session IV (cf. Denz-U., 784) defined that the integral books of the Old and New Testament, with all their parts, as they are customarily read in the Catholic Church and are found in the ancient Vulgate version, must be held to be sacred and canonical. Now among the parts is certainly included Lk. 22:43-44, as results from explicit declarations in the conciliar discussion preparatory to the promulgation of the decree of the fourth session. (Cf. Concilii Tridentini Diariorum pars prima, edited by S. Merkle, in Concilium Tridentinum, Nova Collectio, I, Freiburg im Br. 1901, pp. 38, 45).
The agony of Jesus Christ constitutes an incomparable example and comfort for believers. It is the most human episode of the Gospel: there the Savior appears in the evident reality of a human nature, subject to the infirmities of other men, sin excepted. He experiences all sorrow, 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" sympathize with our infirmities. (Heb. 2:17-18; 4:15).
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Giuseppe Filograssi