Fear in general therefore has perfections which evil does not have.
Perhaps the crucifixion was felt in a more terrible way in the Garden of Olives than on the cross. For on the cross he was actually felt. In the Garden of Olives, he was felt in spirit.
But if from fear in general we pass to fear of Jesus Christ in the Garden of Olives, we will find silence more suitable than speech. Her passion is a series of excesses, many of which are unknown to us, says Angèle de Foligno. But these sufferings, terrible as they were, were successive, not simultaneous. In the development of the Passion, he will not carry 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 was about to be given to them by reality itself. Perhaps the crucifixion was felt in a more terrible way in the Garden of Olives than on the cross. For on the cross he was actually felt. In the Garden of Olives it was felt in spirit.
The sweat of blood is the word of this terror. In general the man does not sweat blood. The sweat of blood is a thing outside of everything, as the terror of Jesus Christ was outside of everything. He felt God in a rage pressing down on him, and he knew what it was to be a God in a rage.
He carried the substantial fury of God. He saw his earthly future, which was passion, then the future of men: he saw their crimes, their pains. No one knows what he saw. No one knows what he smelled. No one knows what he was wearing. No one knows with what tremor this human nature quivered, which had no other support than a divine Person, and which saw itself as the object of God's wrath.
Ernest Hello, Words of God, Reflections on some sacred texts. Editions Jerome Millon.