Agony in a Garden?
Originally posted at The Way of the Rose 54-Day Novena Facebook group December 10, 2020
Novena Day 8
The Sorrowful Mysteries
Have you ever heard a phrase you’re very familiar with and suddenly it meant something different to you, as if you were hearing it for the first time? That happened to me very recently when I was praying the Sorrowful Mysteries with the Agony in the Garden.
I love flowers and everything about them, the colors, the shapes, the smells, and the beauty. Gardens are my happy place. It’s positively hard for me to feel agony while in a garden—to the point that if I were in agony, a garden would likely be where I would go to get out of it.
It struck me that “agony” and “garden” is a very odd juxtaposition, especially when you consider that “the Garden” is also the metaphor for paradise on earth, the Garden of Eden.
Why, then, does Jesus’s “agony” take place in a garden?
This is the first of the Sorrowful Mysteries, so we might think of it as setting the whole sequence in motion. When I’m praying the Sorrowful Mysteries I often have the feeling that I am on a runaway train. The whole damn thing feels avoidable if someone, anyone, had behaved differently and stopped that train.
The scourging didn’t have to happen. The soldiers doing the torture and mocking could have refused to participate or chosen to “phone it in.”
The crown of thorns was completely unnecessary icing on the torture cake. It’s so uncalled for that it reminds of The Odyssey when Odysseus safely escapes from Cyclops and then pauses to taunt him. That taunt triggers the Cyclops to throw a rock, nearly capsizing Odysseus’s ship, and ask his father Poseidon to bring further travails upon Odysseus and his crew.
In the carrying of the cross, Jesus literally carries the means of his own destruction to his death. There are so many ways that could have gone differently.
And the crucifixion, the final triumph of empire over love, is inevitable but only because of the events leading up to it.
But it’s the garden where the train gets going—but only after the first Sorrowful Mystery. It is only when Judas betrays Jesus that all of the rest of the events get triggered. Judas could have changed his mind at any point up until he pointed Jesus out to his captors.
Before the betrayal actually occurs, we’re told that Jesus knows what is coming, and that causes him very human anguish.
And how human is it to agonize about something that may never come to pass, and does not have to come to pass, when surrounded by “paradise on earth”? I know I’ve done it, repeatedly. I’ve worried about money. I’ve worried that I would never find a compatible partner. I’ve worried that I would screw my children up. I’ve beaten myself up for all sorts of “mistakes,” some of which later turned out to be important sources for miracles. All of these worries would seem perfectly justified from the world’s point of view, but as we know the world does not see with the eyes of love.
How could events have shifted if Jesus had realized he was standing in a garden? We’ll never know, but we’ve all seen examples of times when a simple shift in consciousness had profound and lasting effects.
Many Catholic theologians would tell you that the events of the Sorrowful Mysteries were inevitable because Jesus had to be sacrificed to save the rest of us. I don’t buy it. I don’t believe that God (by any name or face) asks for “sacrifice” of that kind. Nor do I think such a sacrifice would save anyone from anything. But more importantly, talking about Jesus’s death as if it were a God-sanctioned “sacrifice” takes focus from the criminal actions of those who brought about this “sacrifice” by giving into their worst impulses rather than their best.
The theologians would tell you that Jesus’s agony had to happen because he had to get to the point of bowing to God’s will rather than his own. I don’t buy that either. I don’t believe it was “God’s will” that this man die in this horrible way. No loving parent would will that on a child. I think we enter life with certain events being likely, “fated” if you will, because they are the challenges we’ve chosen for our lives, but there is always room for grace and free will.
None of it had to happen. The people around Jesus caused or allowed it to happen because their priorities were other than God’s, not because they were doing God’s will. To believe otherwise is to believe in a God other than the one Jesus describes. In The Odyssey (sorry for all The Odyssey references; I’m homeschooling a 14-year-old), the gods, particularly Athena, constantly force people to do the gods’ bidding, often in direct contradiction to the people’s own wishes. Free will exists, but it is easily overwritten by the will of the gods.
But the gods of The Odyssey are irrational, jealous, selfish, and frequently mean. Jesus had a whole different conception of God. He said, “God is love.” There’s very little love in evidence in the Sorrowful Mysteries. I contend that if there were, perhaps there would be no Sorrowful Mysteries.
What does that say about our lives? I don’t think it means that sorrow is entirely avoidable, but the sorrow we feel doesn’t have to cascade into horror if we make an effort to align ourselves with the Divine Mother’s loving heart from the start. Focusing on love as often as possible may help us to recognize when we’re standing in an abundant garden and help us let go of the agony.
And that tiny little change just might dramatically alter the course of future events for the better.
