But if we move from fear in general to the fear of Jesus Christ in the Garden of Olives, we will find silence more fitting than words. His Passion is a series of excesses, many of which are unknown to us, says Angela of Foligno. But these sufferings, however dreadful they were, were successive, not simultaneous. In the unfolding of the Passion, he will not bear them all at once. But in the Garden of Olives, by virtue of the same terror, they acquired in him a greater perfection than that which reality itself would give them. Perhaps the crucifixion was felt in a more terrible way in the Garden of Olives than on the cross. For on the cross it was felt in reality. In the Garden of Olives it was felt in spirit.
The sweat of blood is the word of this terror. Generally, man does not sweat blood. The sweat of blood is something beyond all else, just as the terror of Jesus Christ was beyond all else. He felt the weight of God's fury upon him, and he knew what God's fury was.
He bore the very essence of God's fury. He saw his earthly future, which was passion, and then the future of humankind: he saw their crimes, their suffering. No one knows what he saw. No one knows what he felt. No one knows what he carried within him. No one knows what trembling stirred this human nature, which had no other support than a divine Person, and which saw itself as the object of God's fury.
Ernest Hello, Words of God, Reflections on some sacred texts. Jérôme Millon Publishers.
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