Lent 2001
The Sorrowful Mysteries


6. The Death of Jesus: I commend my spirit.


You have laid me in the depths of the tomb,
in places that are dark, in the depths:
like one alone among the dead;
like the slain lying in their graves;
like those you remember no more,
cut off, as they are, from your hand. - Psalm 88

What a scene. While the townsfolk are running around getting things ready for the Passover, while the Roman soldiers are getting bored, while the few who remained faithful watched, Jesus is dying. A storm comes in and things begin to grow dark. Some earth-shaking bolts of lightning cause a few to look up. But one is noticing something strange about the day. A soldier stands there and sees this young man being executed. Jesus, as His mother’s only son, entrusts her to the care of a younger man who seemed to be one of His followers. He even promised paradise to one of the others hanging there. But to forgive was more than he had ever seen. And there had been a lot of these crucifixions since Pilate got into office. In the late afternoon, this criminal seemed to look off in the distance and gave over everything to some one He called “Father.” A few minutes later, after a splitting cry, He seemed to relax and died.

So now we have come to the end. We are at the 12th Station of the Cross. In the Fordham University Church, this station is a carved wood panel which is different from most others. It is not just a cross with Mary and John. Instead, when you view it, you see it from a distance, standing slightly behind yet amid the crowd. And I think that this is the only way each of us really can view Good Friday. For our own sakes, we must be a little removed. The reality is too much.

As we feel the crushing weight of life’s tragedies, we squirm and get uncomfortable. As we see what the Cross really is in our lives, it loses the ornamentation which so often covers its brutality. Like Jesus fastened and fettered to it, we also feel trapped and helpless. And at the hour when we know we can do no more, we finally come to the intersection which is the cross: We come to the place of faith.

“Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.” This is the ultimate priestly act of Christ. He offers it all to the Father who accepts it. Salvation is won by His losing. Victory is achieved by His defeat. Life is gained by His death. And so the awesome paradox of the cross is shown in His silhouetted body hanging in the dark of the gathering storm clouds while salvation pours out on all humankind.

And it is into this Mystery that we enter. We pray the paradox of the cross not because it is merely an object of wonder; we pray it because we often are called to live it. It is that strange set of contradictions we find each day. A God of love who permits evil. A person of faith who cannot forgive. A soul who longs for God yet is never free of sin. A body which is a consecrated Temple of God falling apart and ravaged by illness. A paradox is not a puzzle. It is not something which has an easy answer or simple solution. It is a reality with which we must live. But far more importantly than just acknowledging it to be a part of life, much like death and taxes, there is something profound in the example of Christ which is the call of holiness. It is the action by which we transcend the paradox of the cross and find redemption in sanctity. We hand over our life to the Father. There is nothing more we can do and nothing less we need to offer.

The cross in our life is so often in front of us we can look around rather than at it. It is the pain of our family’s sufferings, it is the terror of loss, it is the hell of sinful habits, it is the persistent weakness of character and soul. But ultimately, the cross is our life in paradox with our experience of grace and mercy.

How can we honestly compare what we go through to what He did? How dare we? Well, we can. We should. And we must. Jesus was quite clear about the cross. He told us to take it up but never for its own sake. He told us to follow Him with it, never to go our own way. The cross without Christ make no sense at best. At worst, it is a meaningless torture. No God of love could ever call us to the cross without a graced-reason. And no experience of the Christian faith could honestly define God’s mercy without it. So how then, in imitation of Jesus, how do we hand over our lives as Christ did? How do we pray this mystery in our very real lives in following the Master?

We begin by seeing the cross and we must be clear about it. We cannot sugar-coat our pain or suffering. Not that suffering in itself is ever good, but we then see deeper that it is something permitted by the mercy and will of God. I doubt if we as fallen human beings, would ever be able to figure this all out in a single moment of prayer. Instead, coming to the cross is something which has to be a daily procession, a thing in progress, a continual maturing of faith. And once we begin to see the cross, we move to realizing how truly powerless we are before it. Like Christ, we are literally fastened to it and unable to move.

And then we begin to die to self. We begin that hardest death of all, the death of the ego, with fear and stress. But looking to Jesus, we begin to hand it over to the Father. His prayer becomes ours as we, to quote those in AA, begin to “let go and let God.” If there is ever a true cross-centered spirituality out there, it is the 12 Steps. It encapsulates the handing over of everything to God. We make it an offering of praise to Him. As salvation was won for the world by His act, our sanctification is secured by ours. That is why we end the day with Jesus’ own prayer to commendation. But each of us must discover, by the provident hand of God, how we will join in this chorus. Trust in God, as Jesus told us the night before He went through all this. He did not ignore the tears of His son. Why could we think that He would not see us? Hand this struggle to give your life and your crosses over to Him. It will be in this dying that we will find the way to truth and life.

When we follow Lent, when we walk the way of the Cross, we start to instinctively embrace the reality of life and hand it over to the Father. This what these Sorrowful Mysteries have been about. As we journey through Lent and on to life, we are strengthened by the embrace of God even as we move from light to darkness and struggle, in the midst of loneliness, to accept the will of the Father. By sharing in His own pain and humbly bowing before the mystery of sharing in His cross, we state that we also were made for the joy and glory of Easter. Many who are in this purgative state of life find the Easter joy to be a very distant anthem. But it is still there, and it “strains on the ear the distant triumph song.” I hope you have in some way been fed by this series. For myself, I must thank you for the opportunity. Our mutual prayer for each other must then be that we all move forward into Holy Week so that our entire year and life may continue to be made sacred. May the days and years you pray the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary give you the grace to embrace what you pray and lead you to the eternity of heaven.
5. The Carrying of the Cross: Jesus Falls

Your anger weighs down upon me:
I am drowned beneath your waves.
I call to you, Lord, all the day long;
to you I stretch out my hands. - Psalm 88

Sometime that morning, Pilate caved in. Weakened and struggling, Jesus is led under an arch. They take His arms and tie them to a cross beam with a notch carved in back. They are not gentle about it. They are still mad that they will have to go through the Passover crowds with this charlatan who some in the crowd believe is a king. The cross slams into the back of Jesus’ head with its helmet of thorns. It is 700 yards to the place and most of it down hill. They can see how weak He is. Did those two have to go so hard on Him when they scourged Him? As the move out, the swords are drawn and the crowds gather. But they are small. Most of them seem to be hurrying about getting ready for that lamb dinner they are having tonight. But there are those who look as if the hope of the world is passing by. The soldiers see He is really struggling with this. They wonder if He realizes that it is a strange mercy that He is so weak. Better now than on the cross. He keeps stumbling and falling. The captain finally grabs a guy from the crowd to hold up the cross-beam from behind. It helps a little. As they move down the hill and leave the city, they come to the garbage dump where the other two are already hanging and twisting. They’ve had busier days. The governor had crucified more on a single day than these three. Near that little hill, there is a group of woman who are really getting hysterical. He actually says a few words to them before He falls exhausted at the foot of the upright beam. Now they have to do the hard part.

We have really cleaned up the Way of the Cross. The Scriptures do not describe much about it. It is not a journey the Apostles were even there for. Remember, they ran away. They had to be told about it by Simeon and the woman there. John finally showed up and what must have struck him is that it was Jesus who was carrying His own cross. He probably saw that finally fall and collapse. No, today we have a noble and clean Jesus gently carrying a toothpick cross behind Him. And tradition has given Him three falls under the gentle weight of the Cross. But deep down, with little imagination, we know that it was so much more. It was not a pretty scene.

We have seen people working around the house carrying loads too heavy for us. We see workmen moving furniture and construction materials with their heads and eyes downcast in the effort not to drop it. Far less dramatic, we may have carried bags through the airport and felt that we had just climbed Mt. Everest. But this was different. This was the Son of God. This is the One who was carrying the weight of all the sins of human history on His bruised and bloody shoulders.

How could we expect Him not to fall? How could we not see a struggle? We say that He “walked” the Via Dolorosa, the Way of the Cross. Walking is not what I would call it. Pushed, prodded, tripping, and falling is more accurate. And all the while, most of the crowds ignored it. Or at least they hoped that the spectacle would move on. None of us likes a traffic jam. Especially during the holiday season.
By why is this a Mystery and why do we pray it? How could we not, even if more out of devotion than identification? It clearly captured the piety and imagination of generations of Christians from early on and has continued into almost every Church and chapel to this day. Most of the time, we choose to see Jesus being crushed by the heaviness of our sins. But what if we saw deeper into the obvious. We are, after all, the ones He calls to follow in His steps. We are the ones to whom He said “Unless you daily pick up the cross and follow Me, you cannot be my disciples.”

Simply put, Jesus falls. No other gesture in life says “weakness” like a fall. It is a movement from strength to frailty. It is means a giving in, though not a giving up. It ends the illusion that we are super-human. It says that we are not in control. And we hate it.

But all of us fall. As children, we can only learn to walk by repeated tumbling. We learn to ride a bike by taking a few spills. And as we get older, we take steps to avoid falls. But it happens. And not just physically.

When we fall morally or spiritually, we experience that same weakness in our souls. We realize that we are far from perfect and even farther from being strong. And for most of us, this is not a once, twice or thrice event. It is not a cleaned-up spiritual bouquet. It is a hard and painful reality of daily life for those who are following in the Master’s steps and stubbles. Do we, then, have the right to be surprised or even offended that we too would fall? Do we pretend that the weight of our fallen natures would be less for us than the One who carried ours to Calvary? How could we not pray this Mystery if we honestly appreciate the mystery of Redemption?

But here is the truth of this Mystery. We see in the example of Christ, and of our own graced experience, that we have to rise again, we have to get up when we fall. The child who falls and never rises never learns to walk. Nor does that child focus on the fall. Yes, we fall in so many ways and so many times. We all know the weight of guilt and habit. And we often feel alone in this struggle since like Christ’s own Way, people around us seem to go about dong what they always do. But we have a goal and we are on a journey.

“Lift us up strong Son of God” we pray this evening. Help us to see that Your grace is strongest in our weakness. Let our souls fall into Your peace even as we stubble through this valley of tears. Take from us the arrogance of pretended strength and give us the humility of heavenly Providence. Teach us to walk as You did by holding our hands firmly as we fall. Take the pitfalls and potholes we fall into each day and make them hills and mountains of discipleship. Lift us up, strong Son of God as You were, both now on way of the cross and up to the glory of heaven. Amen.4. The Scourging and the Crowning: By His wounds we are healed; by our own we are sanctified.

Wretched, close to death frm my youth,
I have borne your trials; I am numb.
Your fury has swept down upon me;
your terrors have utterly destroyed me. - Psalm 88

All through the night Jesus is led from official to official, from trial to trial. Through it all, He says little. There is no point. Since the Garden it is clear to Him what must happen according to the Father’s will. Pilate is the worst. While Herod may have been lacking in intelligence and the priests may have been petty, Pilate was just cruel. He never wanted this assignment and let everyone know it. And it wasn’t as if the cream of the crop was sent to the garrison either. The soldiers lived in constant fear of insurrection from these zealots. Why couldn’t they be like so many other countries under Rome? Some even welcomed the improvement in life Rome offered. But not here. Not in this dirty and dusty place where they claimed God lived among men. What kind of god would live here?

Pilate makes a decision. To placate the priests, he orders Jesus scourged. This was more than a school-house hickory stick. It would be visually shocking, unforgettable and perhaps even fatal. Maybe Pilate thought it would be enough for them. So off Jesus goes. The two soldiers go at it until their arms are tired. Jesus Himself is limp with blood loss and pain. And to add to it, the soldiers are furious that their morning has been interrupted with all this because Jesus said He was a king. “So let’s make Him one.” They twist the thorns into a helmet and slam it on Him. They dress Him up with a robe and scepter and humiliate Him. Pilate sends the order to bring Him back in. Their game is over.

So this is how we treat a king. This is the way we acknowledge the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. This is humanity’s genuflection to the Son of God. Images and acting can never fully grasp what happened here. There is little drama and less nobility. It is merely pathetic. I think that is why all the Gospel writers do not go into detail. But we enter into these Mysteries because they resonate with our life. We enter into prayer as we encounter these events because we are following the royal road of the Cross. And we pray them because they are not foreign to us.

Rarely do we see ourselves in the place of Christ. We are a little more familiar with the place of the soldiers. We see the price of our sins. Not that we are comfortable with this, but we know it is true. But to see that there is healing here, to see virtue, is to see redemption. Isaiah had said “by his stripes we are healed.” It is in each stripe drawn by the soldiers that morning where we find healing. It in the mortification of Jesus’ body that we find salvation from the sins of each day. But here is the greater mystery: In praying this, we unite our small sufferings with Christ at the Pillar. We are healed and strengthened by His suffering and find that we are sanctified in our own. Praying this mystery begins to make sense of our own “whips and scorns of outrageous fortune.” It is easy to be a martyr, to ultimately follow in the way of the Cross. It is another matter to daily see all the small things as part of the road to holiness.

But there is more. It is not only through the offering and uniting that we are made holy. There is another step. It is the path of humility.

Of all the Christian virtues, this is the least understood and appreciated. Coming from the Latin word meaning “dirt”, a humiliation is something which brings us to that level. We naturally avoid it at all costs and instinctively fight it. But it is often unavoidable. And so we look to Jesus, scourged and enthroned as they place the thorns on His head.

Humility is the central virtue. Without it, none of the other virtues make sense or work. It means to acknowledge, as far as we are able, who we truly are in the sight of God, others and ourselves. Plagued by the self-delusion that only sin can cause, we often attempt to build up a self which does not necessarily exist. And like a sand castles, the waves of reality knock us down. Humility is the strength to say who we are and who we are not. Now in this mystery we see Jesus humiliated. We see Him encountering how faithless humanity sees Him: a joke. But there is nothing funny in His life or ours about humiliations. They bring us down, and not just emotionally. They are an opportunity.

Some pray for humility. Others pray for the grace to accept the humiliations life offers. Essentially, they are the same. I prefer the language of the second. Humility grows more by acceptance than by action. We are taught more than what we teach ourselves. We pray this Mystery so that we have the gift of seeing ourselves through the lens of humiliations. To accept the limits, mistakes, and even the sins of life as an invitation to knowing more than we naturally could about ourselves is to find healing.

These Mysteries are united. By knowing our truest need for healing, we find it in the redemption of Christ. It offers us a place in our lives where the hurts, pains, sorrows and weaknesses of life can be redeemed even if not understood. A religion without the praetorium courtyard is a false faith. We each need that place where life can be encountered in all of its brutality and embarrassment. In praying these decades, we accept the invitation of God to enter within ourselves and encounter the scourges and humiliations of life. Don’t be afraid. Don’t get caught up in the moment and forget that these are the stripes by which we are healed. Don’t be so taken by the embarrassment of our sins that we fail to see the weak child God so deeply loves. And most all, rejoice that the One who underwent all this for us has risen above what happened here. And so shall we.3. The Agony in the Garden: The Dereliction

You have taken away my friends
and made me hateful in their sight.
Imprisoned, I cannot escape;
my eyes are sunken with grief.
Friend and neighbor you have taken away:
my one companion is darkness. - Psalm 88

From outside the low walls of the garden there is a rustling and the soft clanging of steel. The wind is fanning the soldiers’ torches and sending sparks into the night air. In cold orange glow, a figure steps forward, approaches Jesus and embraces Him. There is a scuffle and a bit of shouting. A servant is hit and healed without much notice. Everyone is focused on these two characters. Judas is shaking with anticipation. All of his political dreams of Israel’s liberation from the Romans were about to come true. Jesus is majestic in His resolve to face this mob. His is a nobility hidden by the darkness of the night. As they finally get the courage to take Him, the soldiers, really nothing more than security guards, notice that the others who were with him seemed to have disappeared under the cover of the olive trees. But no matter. They were not here for them. They were here for Him. Mission accomplished.

The Irish have a saying. There are some friends who are like shadows. In sunlight, they are always there. But when things grow dark, they disappear. No night, no friends could have been more like shadows. They felt fear, they were weak. And they saw over their shoulders, the One they had just abandoned standing there all alone. They were helpless and worse, they knew that it didn’t matter if they had stayed. The outcome would have been the same. But that was never important. It never is.

A derelict is literally some one who has no one and no where to go. Christ suddenly appears in this Mystery to be a derelict. Alone and sad, He “looked around for consolers, and found none.” The disciples felt this too. They were made to feel empty by their own actions. Personally I cannot think of a more tragic and sad scene in all the Bible. But it is one which we pray because it a scene which happens constantly in our life. In all the gardens, we can so easily see ourselves as Jesus abandoned, the disciples feeling or the crowd observing.

We all know these emotions. We have all seen them in our families, friends, parishes, and communities. We sometimes even dare to imagine what others go through as they are left alone in the midst of sickness or calamity. We are all too aware of how painful we have felt this when we are left alone. Our hearts break when we see it happening to others. But we still go forward, we still step into this empty place and bring this profound sadness to prayer. This is the prayer of dereliction. It is a prayer of complaint, of anger, of horror. We cry “it is not fair” even if we are the ones who are doing the abandoning.

When we pray the Agony, we identify with Jesus, the disciples and the on-lookers. It is a Mystery which seeks to redeem this moment in everyone’s life. It tries, without answering, to make sense of the situation. And like Christ, it gives strength to the one who prays it to continue. Like the disciples, it gives the grace of repentance and of making amends. Like the on-lookers, it gives the clarity of vision to see the pain of others.

But here is the greatest fruit of this Mystery. It is an act of faith. It prays, and thus affirms, that Christ is never truly alone. It proclaims that those who suffer in solitude are never really abandoned. And speaks gently to our hearts that we are never derelicts who have no place in the mercy of God. In a sometimes heartless world when and where things and people are estranged and neglected, the light of those soldiers torches illuminate the truth of faith: God is with us. While more may be appreciated, none else. is needed. Emmanuel, the Derelict, is with us.
2. The Agony in the Garden: The Struggle of Prayer

For my soul is filled with evils;
my life is on the brink of the grave.
I am reckoned as one in the tomb:
I have reached the end of my strength, - Psalm 88

In the darkness, Jesus takes Peter, James and John with Him as they go deeper into the heart of the Garden. These three begin to sleep as they lean against the trunks of the olive trees. Jesus prays to the Father while resting on the large rock in the middle of the Garden. He is taken by such distress and pain that He even sweats blood. His prayer ends with the words “Thy will be done.” Exhausted and shaken, He goes three times over to these three closest friends and finds them sleeping. He understands, but there is something going on so deep within Him that understanding is not enough. He goes back to this same prayer. And again and again, He prays “Thy will be done.”

What is going on here? What could possibly cause such deeply troubling emotions? More to the point, how in the midst of this could the result be an acceptance of the will of the Father?

I have no trouble believing that what Jesus went through that long, dark night was a full vision of what was going to happen the next day. He saw it all. And more than this, He saw the reasons why He was going to undergo this nightmare. All the pain and all the sin may have been shown Him. And He accepts this in His human nature for the sake of all humanity.

If any of you have been through surgery, major or minor, the last thing you want to know is how it is going to be done. You don’t want the details. I even asked my knee surgeon not to use verbs. But Jesus may have seen it all. It is here in the Garden that the greatest suffering may have occurred. Here He psychologically underwent what His sacred body and soul were to suffer in a few hours. There was to be nothing on Friday that He would not have understood the night before. What happened that night is beyond human imagination. The horror was laid out in excruciating detail. And yet with all this, with all the deep stress of the soul, an option must have presented which most of us probably would have taken.

He could have run away. He could have hidden from it. He could have avoided what He may have seen. Yet in that human nature, He repeated the words He had taught His disciples to say. He prayed “Thy will be done.” He said ‘no’ to flight and said ‘yes’ to the Father. I believe He prayed this several times because of how overwhelming it must have been. And in this, we see our prayer in the dim light of the Garden .

First of all, when we are in a place to understand what is happening within and around us, we come to a point when we really perceive what is happening. This is more than understanding, it is more than just sheer knowledge. It is an emotional experience beyond even feeling. It puts us in a new and often fearful place. We can spend a great deal of time avoiding this type of pain. Many do with the help of various drugs such as alcohol. But Christian prayer is call to reality. It is call to perceive - in the light of faith - the reality of suffering and pain. You could even say that authentic prayer is one which cannot help but embrace these moments of horror. But we cannot stop there. To do so would become an opportunity for despair.

Secondly, we take this perception and bring it to the mercy of the Father. Like Jesus, we view what is happening with one eye on the love of God. We just do not walk around complaining how miserable life can be. We all know that. We even say that complaining is useless since no one is listening. But God is. And He is there, with us in the Garden willing to help us in the struggle of seeing our life and living our faith. Be assured, this is a struggle. We rattle off the Lord’s Prayer so often we can skip over that little phrase “Thy will be done.” It has been spoken in the darkness of so many gardens since the first time it was used there. But at some point, we all engage in the struggle of prayer and have to come to that lonely and scary place when the tragedies of life and the reality of faith begin their titanic encounter.

And this is the third movement. It is the victory of faith becomes a part of our life when we can say “Thy will be done.” And these are not just words. They become the very reason for almost everything else we do in life. It is a transformation at the core of who we are. It leads to a peaceful acceptance, hour by hour, of the way things are which we cannot change. It is not a one-shot deal. This struggle happens over and over again. Jesus Himself prayed three times. We cannot expect to do better.

I hope you can see why we pray this Mystery of the Agony in Gethsemane. For most of us, there has to be a place and time when life and faith are prayed, when what goes on outside of prayer is brought into prayer. St. Paul said that for those who love God, al things work toward good. The Garden is where this working out is done. The reality is that there is a peace among those who have accepted the will of God in their lives. At the end of His prayer, Jesus has both the strength and the peace to stand up, rouse the disciples, and face the on-coming storm of Judas and the Romans. It is in the example, the icon, of Jesus that we too can stand and face whatever may come. Once we have that deep appreciation of the reality of our lives and subject it to the mercy of God, with His help, we come to that point of saying and living “Thy will be done.” May it be so. May His will be done.
1. The Agony in the Garden: From Light to Darkness

Lord my God, I call for help by day;
I cry at night before you.
Let my prayer come into your presence.
O turn your ear to my cry. - Psalm 88

This Lent, I thought it would be unique to consider the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. Soon, however, I realized that there are so many aspects of these events of our salvation that I would need to limit the scope for these few minutes. As I began this work, I found that the Sorrowful Mysteries touch on elements of our own lives we often do not have the opportunity to celebrate or preach on. One in particular are the first three Mysteries, and specifically, the Agony in the Garden. For the first three Thursdays, I would like to focus on this Mystery and spend the next three Thursdays considering the other four.

Why? Why so much time in the Garden?

The reason is simple: I think we can relate to it. I have chosen three themes which in so many profound ways help us to identify and ultimately see Christ’s Redemption in our lives. The first, tonight’s meditation, is on the journey from light into darkness. The second is the struggle of prayer and doing the will of God. The third is the dereliction or the abandonment which is a part of the darkness.

So let us make this journey with Christ. It is a private pilgrimage, not a public event such as the Way of the Cross. Singing the Passover Psalms, the small group leaves the Table and the comfort of the Upper Room. The begin going down the path and leave the city walls. There are no street lamps or light other than the stars and the ambient light from the homes around the Holy City. Their eyes have already adjusted to the darkness and grow sensitive to whatever light can be seen. As they move away from the distant sounds of all those Passover celebrations, they start to get extremely quiet. Jesus most of all is not saying a word. He looks down the path and sees the garden. They wonder why He looks that way. Isn’t Gethsemane just an olive grove with a press in it? They enter the garden and sit near the gate. They have all just eaten and had a few glasses of the Passover wine. They speak in soft tones about the strange things He did with the matzoh and the final cup of wine. As they chat quietly, one by one they drop off to sleep. It is late. Three of them were called over by Jesus to go a bit further into the garden. “It’s always those three, isn’t it” says one of them. But they are too tired to care. Even the three start to nod off as Jesus goes over to that big rock. Perhaps the owners of the garden tried to get rid of it, to move it, but were unable. For Jesus, He just threw Himself on it and started to pray in a way they had never seen before. For all of them, it was going to be a very long night.

Darkness is real. And it is scary. It changes the view of everything and everyone. Colors, buildings, landscapes, and people are transformed. What little light is there, casts a dismal gray over what could be or is a thing of beauty and brilliance. The memory of the light and color is real, though fading. Soon, we begin wishing that we are not there. And there is a stillness to the dark. There is no real moving in any direction because there are no points of reference. Soon, the imagination takes over and flashes of memory and illusion cause distress deep within. And into this abyss of spiritual darkness, Jesus goes with head held high and spirit resolute. He enters into the deepest and most horrifying place in creation - He enters into the human experience of misery.

Why, then do we pray this? Why call it a mystery? Each of us in some way, at some time has, is, or will find this darkness within. I know from my own experience, both personally and priestly, that it is there. You know it too. You can see it in the face of a child going on stage for the first time, a young woman graduating college, a young man being fired, a mother caring for a sick child, a father waiting for his teenager to come back from that party, a husband seeing his wife slowly die from cancer, the elderly person alone in the nursing home bed. At all stages and in so many ways we face the darkness. What we knew is transformed and obscured by it. Our anchors and foundations of a daily routine are shaken and shifted. What is beautiful about life can be hidden and what is soft can appear hard in silhouettes. Memories of happier times - real or perceived - make us wish we could erase the chalkboard and start all over again, make us wish we could jump back in time. But like that rock we see in Gethsemane, we cannot change it. Worse than this, we can judge that this is not a good place and that God cannot be there.

But He was. And He is. If not, then this is no Garden; this is hell. Jesus enters those gardens of our life. He joins us in that darkness when things are not clear and orderly. The fear is as real as His presence. We pray this Mystery because we can do nothing else. And by Jesus’ Presence in our garden, it is redeemed. Does He make it all better? Does the situation change? No. Not usually. But our eyes, our souls, our bodies, our minds adjust to the darkness and we perceive that gentle Shepherd guiding us through this place of shadow. And as dark and cold as it can be, we are not alone. He is there waiting for us, ready to sit on that immovable rock of reality. And His place, as it was that night is there - right next to us.