Sweating
blood in the
by Rev. Ron Rolheiser
"In his anguish he
prayed even more earnestly, and his sweat fell to the ground like great drops
of blood." Luke gives us this picture of Jesus in the
When we look at the accounts
of Jesus' passion and death we see that what the gospel writers
highlight is not Jesus' physical suffering but his emotional anguish. Indeed,
in the gospels, his physical sufferings are almost underplayed. In Mark's
account, for instance, the entire aspect of physical suffering is written off
in one line: "They led him away and crucified him." What's emphasized
instead is that Jesus was alone, abandoned, betrayed, morally lonely, hung out
to dry, unanimity-minus-one.
Moreover, the fact that
Thus, it's Jesus, the lover,
who sweats blood in the garden. What he suffers there is the emotional agony
that sometimes comes on us as the price of love. What Jesus sweats there is a
lover's anguish. What is that?
Several years ago, there was
a TV series entitled, Thirty Something. One of the episodes ran this way: A
group of men had gathered for a "men-only" party at a hotel. One of
the men at the party, a married man, found himself attracted to one of the
hotel managers, a young woman who was on duty that night, in charge of the
hospitality. He had to deal with her all evening in terms of making arrangements
for food, drink, and music. She was attracted to him too and as the evening
went on their bond grew and, though nothing but practical conversation was
exchanged, the romantic chemistry between them began to intensify.
As the evening drew to a
close, both did what comes naturally, they lingered near each other and found
every kind of practical excuse to prolong their contact, without really knowing
what to say to each other, but sensing that there was a special connection that
they were reluctant to break off.
Finally, it was time to part.
The man stalled, thanking her one last time for what she'd done for the group.
She, not wanting to lose the moment, took the risk and said to him: "I
very much enjoyed meeting you. Would you like to get together again
sometime?"
He, guilty fingering his
wedding ring and apologizing for not being more forthright, did what too few of
us would have the honesty and courage to do. He sweated a little blood and then
said to her: "I'm sorry, but I'm married. I need to go home to my
wife."
My dad used to say to me:
"Unless you can sweat blood sometimes, you will never keep a commitment,
in marriage, in priesthood, or in anything else. That's what it takes to be
faithful!"
In essence, at least in
miniature, that was Jesus' agony in the garden. The blood he was sweating was
the blood of emotional crucifixion, the prince of being faithful in love. To be
faithful, to love beyond daydreams, requires that sometimes - in hotel rooms,
in gardens, at parties, in our workplaces, in places where wine is drunk, and
in every place where people gather and intimacies are exchanged - we have to
enter a great loneliness, the loneliness of moral integrity, the loneliness of
fidelity, the loneliness of duty, the loneliness of renouncing an overpowering
desire, the loneliness of losing life so that we might find it in a higher way.
And that isn't easy. Jesus
didn't find it easy and neither do we. What love and fidelity ask will
sometimes drive us to our knees in anguish and, like Jesus in Gethsemane, we
will find ourselves begging God for a means to still have our own way in this,
to have our cake and eat it too, to find some way around fidelity, vow,
promise, and duty.
This is a lover's anguish
because the part in us that's agonizing and resisting is that part of the heart
that stewards intimacy, romance, and embrace. The lover in us is having to let go of some very precious things; it's
having to die to something for the sake of something else, and that's
emotionally crucifying.
The account of Jesus sweating
blood in the
Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher, and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX; www.ronrolheiser.com.