Why sleep ? (6)

"Being in the agony of combat, he prayed more urgently ; and his sweat became like lumps of blood falling on the earth. When he rose from his prayer, he came to the disciples, whom he found sleepy with sorrow ; He said to them, Why are you sleeping ? Stand up and pray, so that you do not go into temptation." Luke 22. 44-46

For our Lord, Gethsemane is an anticipation of Golgotha. In this garden, the thought that he should bear our sins, be made sin, be put in the dust of death, has made him suffer terribly.

When I read how distressed he was in the Garden of Gethsemane, as he anticipated the horror of what he was going to suffer on the cross, I exclaimed : "Help me, Lord, not to be like these three disciples ! They were "asleep with sadness", unaware of the fight that was going on. It is there, "at a stone's throw" from his disciples, that my Lord renounces all his rights. I will never be able to enter, neither on the earth nor in the sky, in the depths of this anguish.

Why did the disciples sleep at such a moment? Luke alone indicates the cause of their sleep: sadness. There is no doubt that the emotional tension was extreme among the disciples. They really loved the Lord. But they did not know how to hear his request. As he was about to cross the anguish of death, he told them when he came into the garden : "Pray that you do not go into temptation" (v.40). He forgets for a moment what he has before him to think of them, in full awareness of everything and in communion with his Father.

It is possible that the weight of the test is such that one wants to sleep : sleep becomes a way out and we forget to bring his sorrows to God.

But the Lord, "having risen from his prayer," returns to them. His heart remains open to his disciples. He accompanies the reproach he addresses to them with a call filled with tenderness and mercy : "Why do you sleep ? Stand up and pray, so that you do not go into temptation." The critical moment was approaching, they would leave it and run away because they had not been alert (Matt 26. 56).

"Yes, Lord, make me more sensitive to all that you have endured. I know that when you introduce me into your sky, I will measure a little better your greatness and the immensity of your love.

Source (Pleasing the Lord)