Jesus Sweat

JESUS SWEAT

Begin by taking a few breaths and paying attention to the air moving in and out of your lungs and mouth. Notice where you feel tension or discomfort in your body. To the extent you are able, try to relax, let the chair you are sitting in fully support your body, and release the tension as you breathe deeply.

a prayer to open

Here I am, Lord, in my tired, aging, hurting, wondrous body.

Open my heart to you now. You are my High Priest who knows.

Then, accompanied by the disciples, Jesus left the upstairs room and went as usual to the Mount of Olives. There he told them, “Pray that you will not give in to temptation.”

He walked away, about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” Then an angel from heaven appeared and strengthened him. He prayed more fervently, and he was in such agony of spirit that his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood.

At last he stood up again and returned to the disciples, only to find them asleep, exhausted from grief. “Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and pray, so that you will not give in to temptation.”

Jesus’ anxiety and anguish about his upcoming gruesome death was so severe that his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood. His body ached and fought, so desperate was his human will to escape what he had been called to do on earth for us.

• Close your eyes and reflect on Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane just hours before he would be put to death by crucifixion. How must his body have been responding? What other sensations besides what we are told can you imagine him experiencing in his body?
• Reflect on the reality that God came to be with us in a body that hurt and responded as our bodies do to pain and anguish. What does this truth reveal to you about his love? What does it reveal about Jesus’ ability to identify with you?
• Reflect on the times you have been in physical pain. How might your experience help you identify with and serve someone you know who is currently suffering physical pain?

Jesus Christ—

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace;

the one through whom and for whom all things were made; and

the one in whom I live and move and have my being—

you became flesh and made your dwelling among us.

And nothing—neither death nor life, angels nor demons, the present nor the future; not any powers, height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation—can separate me from the love of our God, which is in you, Jesus Christ my Lord.