THE AGONY IN THE GARDEN

When our Lord was in the garden, he was not suffering so much from pain as from evil. Remember that only the innocent know what sin is. We can become so feverish that we think that we are well. Only the sinless really know guilt. So our Lord now reaches back into the past, not thinking of the pains that he has endured since he put on this mortal frame, but he drags up to the present moment all the sins of the world. The sin of Adam; Cain was there, purple in the sheet of his brother's blood. The abominations of Sodom and Gomorrah were there. The coarseness of the Jews and the sometimes even greater coarseness of the Gentiles. All those sins and abominations and idolatries were there.   And then with his infinite mind looking into the future, Jesus dragged back upon himself all of the sins that would ever be committed until the end of time. Sins that rent Christ's mystical body, sins of the old, who should have passed the age of sinning. Sins of the young, for whom the heart of Christ is tenderly pierced. Sins committed in the city, in the city's fetid atmosphere of sin. Sins committed in the country that made all nature blush. Sins too awful to be mentioned, sins too terrible to be named. And Samson-like Jesus reached up and pulled down this horrible edifice of sin upon himself until the blood began to pour out from his body forming on the olive roots, red drops, the first red beads in the rosary of redemption.