The Precious Blood – Short Meditations for July
By Rev. Richard F. Clarke
22nd Day – The Second Shedding of the Precious Blood
It is said that those who have suffered an extremity of anguish have sometimes been bathed in a perspiration which was tinged with blood. In the Garden of Gethsemani, Jesus was bathed in a sweat of blood which poured down to the ground. Ah, what must have been the intensity of His agony! None ever knew such sorrow as His. None ever was so crushed by the weight of intolerable misery. How could this happen to the Divine Son of God? To me it might have happened, and happened justly for my sins, but to Him it seems impossible, unjust, cruel.
It happened to Jesus because on Him sin was allowed to wreak all its malice, to do all the havoc of which its immeasurable intensity of evil is possible, as far as was compatible with His sinlessness and His divine perfections. In some respects the very perfection of His nature caused Him to suffer more, as none was so sensitive to pain and disappointment as He, and His divinity, far from being used by Him to relieve His sufferings, was only employed to enable His sacred humanity ro suffer more than it could have borne unaided.
Was this unjust? No, for He took it upon Himself and bore it willingly. Was it cruel? No, for His sacred humanity was to have a reward altogether exceeding such sufferings as His. It was to enjoy the glory of the highest heaven for all eternity in return for its brief agony on earth. For the joy that was set before Him He gladly endured it all, the joy of saving us from sin and death.
AnaStpaul 