FOURTH MEDITATION OF OUR SAVIOR'S PASSION ~ LUCY HERBERT

COECKE VAN AELST, Pieter 

Agony in the Garden 

1527-30

IV. Meditation. 

See and behold, my soul, what a condition thy Lord is in for thee! beset so much anguish, struggling and fainting under the apprehensions of death, going and coming from the Disciples to Eternal Father, and from the Eternal Father to the Disciples, and finding no comfort from either, he continues his prayer for three hours, begging his Father, that if it were possible that cup might pass from him. Here we may take notice, he first says. Father to you all things are possible. And after adds, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. What could make this impossible to him, to whom all things are possible?  O! it was only his love for us which made it so!

O ecstasy of love! O stupendous effect of God's pity and companion towards us! he, to redeem a slave, has delivered his only Son, that we might be delivered from the jaws of Satan, and pains of hell; though we did not ask it, yet for our sake he refuses his most innocent Son what he petitions for himself with sweat of Blood. And after this so great an effect of God's love, we are frighted from our duty to him by the least difficulty, and can take no pains for his sake, nor pray an hour, nor forgive an injury, nor resist a temptation, for love of him.

~ LUCY HERBERT