Reflections on Prayer and Obedience through the Passion Narratives of Christ

 Reflections on Prayer and Obedience through the Passion Narratives of Christ

Lent is a period of (a penitential) preparation to celebrate the Lord’s resurrection at Easter. It is a 40-day journey with the spiritual exercises of prayer (Scripture), fasting (self-control), and almsgiving (serving) that can help us in this preparation. Above all, we are called to a true inner conversion of heart. The emphasis is more on repentance and sanctification. We also try to reflect on the sufferings of Christ.

It has been said that the gospels are “passion narratives with extended introductions”. Unfortunately, the most important part of the gospels is also the least highlighted during the liturgical year, since the passion narratives are read only once a year, during Holy Week, when it is impossible to pause to explain and comment on them because of the length of the liturgy.

Let us attempt, at least in small part, to spend some time with Jesus at Gethsemane and on Calvary to arrive at Easter well prepared.

Jesus at Gethsemane: Prayer

Taken from the various gospels, there is a combination of human suffering and divine strengthening. The original nucleus from which the whole scene at Gethsemane was developed seems to have been the prayer of Jesus. We see Jesus’ struggle in prayer as his passion approaches.

The movements he goes through are the movements of a person who is struggling in mortal agony: he throws himself “flat on his face”; he gets up to speak to his disciples; he turns to kneel down; then he gets up again’… he sweats drops of blood (Lk 22:44). He cries out the supplication: “Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee; remove this chalice from me …” (Mk 14:36). Jesus’ prayer in the face of his death is brought to the fore especially in the Letter to the Hebrews, which says that “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death” (Heb 5:7).

But the cause of his agony is even more profound, that is, he feels himself weighed down by all the evil and ugliness in the world. He did not commit any of this evil, but it is as though he did, since he freely took it upon himself. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24). According to the biblical meaning of the expression, “He himself bore our sins in his body” means he bore our sins in his very own person – soul, body and heart together. St. Paul says, “For our sake God made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become righteousness of God” (1 Cor 5:21).

At Gethsemane, Jesus prays not just to exhort us to pray, but he prays because, being a true man, “like us in all things except sin.” He experienced our own struggle against what is repugnant (extremely unacceptable) to human nature.

There is also something to learn from this event, as we are called to imitate Christ. “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21). What do we learn from this?

The word “agony”, applied to Jesus in Gethsemane (Luke 22:44) should be understood in its original meaning of “struggle”. So, there comes a time when prayer becomes a struggle. I am not speaking of the struggle against distractions, that is, the struggle within ourselves. I am speaking of the struggle with God. This happens when God asks you something that your nature is not ready to give him, and when what God is doing becomes incomprehensible and bewildering.

We have a similar struggle with God in prayer. It is Jacob’s struggle with God (Gen 32:23-32). Jacob’s struggle occurs at night, on the other side of a river, just as that of Jesus occurs at night on the other side of the Kedron River. Jacob distances himself from his slaves, wives, and children to be alone, and Jesus separates himself from his three closest disciples to pray. Why is Jacob struggling with God? He says to the angel, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me” (Gen 32:26), that is, until you have granted what I ask.

Jacob struggles, then, to bend God to his will; Jesus struggles to bend his human will to God. Jesus struggles because “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mk 14:38). So, who are we like when we pray in ‘times of trouble’? We are like Jacob, the OT man, when we struggle in prayer to persuade God to change his mind, more than to have ourselves changed and accept his will; when we struggle to have him remove the cross from us, more than to be able to carry it with him. We are like Jesus; instead, if, amidst groans and sweating blood, we see to abandon ourselves to the Father’s will.

In Jesus’ prayer, something unusual happened: the roles became inverted, namely, God becomes the one who beseeches, and Jesus is the one beseeched. Jesus prayed to take away the cup of suffering from him, but beseeched him to take up the cup. This is what happens in our prayer too. Let us become aware of this. You go to prayer to ask God for something, and as you pray, you realize little by little that it is God, extending his hand to you, who is asking you for something. You went to ask him to remove some thorn in the flesh, some cross, or some trial, or to free you from some position, or some situation, or the presence of a certain person… And now it is God who is asking you to accept that cross, that situation, that position, that person.

This is what we see precisely in Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane. Jesus prays for the Father to take up the cup from him, but the Father asks him to drink it for the salvation of the world.

A story by Rabindranath Tagore helps us understand what this is about. A beggar is begging from door to door along the path of the village. Suddenly, a gold chariot appears in the distance. It is the chariot of the king’s son. The beggar thinks that this will be the opportunity of a lifetime. He sits down, opening his sack, expecting alms and riches to rain down on the ground around him without even having to ask. But to his surprise, the chariot draws near and stops. The king’s son gets out and stretches out his right hand, saying, “What do you have to give me?” Confused and hesitant, the beggar takes from his sack the smallest grain of corn and gives it to him. After going back home, while emptying the sack, he finds one very small grain of gold. He weeps bitterly for not having the courage to give everything.

In Luke 22:44, we read, Jesus “being in agony, he prayed more earnestly”.

Our life is filled with many smaller versions of the night at Gethsemane. There can be many different causes: a threat that arises against our health, a lack of understanding from those around us, the indifference of someone close to us, the fear of consequences for some mistake we have made. There can be deeper causes: the loss of a sense of God, an overwhelming consciousness of our own sin and unworthiness, a sense of having lost our faith – in brief, what the saints have called “the dark night of the soul”.

So the first thing we should do in such cases is to turn to God in prayer. We should not deceive ourselves.

One last thing we can learn before we leave the Jesus of Gethsemane, as St. Leo the Great says, “Our Lord’s passion has been drawn out to the end of the world”. Jesus does not still experience any physical torment; now his pain is completely interior. He sweats his blood because it is his heart, not his flesh, that is crushed. The best place to encounter this Jesus “in agony even to the end of the world” is the Eucharist. Jesus instituted it immediately before he went to the Garden of Olives so that his disciples, in every age, could become “contemporaries” of his passion.

Obedience seems to be the key to the whole story of the passion: “Obedience unto Death”

The obedience of Christ is the aspect of the passion most emphasized in apostolic teaching. We read in Philippians 2:8, “Christ became obedient unto death, even death on a cross”. In Romans 5:19, “By one man’s obedience many will be made righteous”. In Hebrews 5:8-9, “He learned obedience through what he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him”. St. Bernard said, “It was not his death alone that pleased the Father, but His voluntary surrender to death.

God desires obedience, not sacrifice, according to Scripture in 1 Samuel 15:22 and Hebrews 10:5-7.

What is obedience in our Christian life?

In the New Testament, obedience is almost always seen as obedience to God. Of course, the NT also speaks of all the other forms of obedience – to parents, to masters, to superiors, to civil authority, “to every human institution” (1 Pet 2:13). The noun “obedience” is always used to indicate only obedience to God, except in one passage in Philemon where it indicates obedience to the apostle (1:21). St. Paul speaks of the “obedience of faith” (Rom 1:5; 16:26), of obedience to teaching (Rom 6:17), of obedience to the Gospel (Rom 10:16; 2 Thess 1:8), of obedience to the truth (Gal 5:7), and of obedience to Christ (2 Cor 10:5).

Obeying God involves paying attention to God, who speaks in the Church through his spirit, who then illuminates the words of Jesus and of the whole Bible and confers authority on them, making them channels for the living and present will of God for us.

Now, obedience to God does not divert from obedience to visible and institutional authority, but, on the contrary, renews it, strengthens it, and enlivens it to the point that obedience to people becomes the criterion for judging whether there is obedience to God or not, and if it is authentic.

Why is it so important to obey God? It is important because in obeying we do the will of God; we want the same things that God wants, and thus we fulfil our original vocation to be “in his image and likeness”.

Obedience to God is something that we all can do always, whether we are subordinates or superiors. A person needs to know how to obey a command (there is a profound theological reason underlying it).

We have the famous episode of the centurion who said, “I am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me: and Is ay to one, ‘Go’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come’, and he comes; and to my slave, ‘Do this’, and he does it (Lk 7:8). By the very fact that he is under – that is, in obedience to – his superiors and, ultimately, the emperor, the centurion can give orders that have behind them the authority of the emperor. He is obeyed by his soldiers because he, in turn, obeys and submits to his superior.

The centurion believes that Jesus is related to God in a parallel way. Since Jesus is in communion with God and obeys him, he has behind him the authority of God himself, and therefore he can command the centurion’s servant to be healed, and he will be healed; he can command the sickness to leave, and it will leave.

It is the force and simplicity of the centurion’s logic that draws the admiration of Jesus and makes him say that he had not found such faith in Israel. He understood that the authority of Jesus and his miracles were derived from his perfect obedience to the Father, just as Jesus himself also explains in the Gospel of John, “He who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what is pleasing to him” (8:29).

St. Ignatius of Antioch gave this wonderful advice to one of his episcopal colleagues: “Let nothing be done without your consent, and continue, as at present, to do nothing yourself without the consent of God”. There is a parallel here to the commandment to love: “He who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 Jn 4:20). If you do not obey God’s visible representatives on earth, how can you say you obey God who is in heaven?

Before ending our reflections on obedience, let us contemplate the living icon of obedience, the one who not only imitated the obedience of the Servant but lived it with him. Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word”.