Bishop Challoner's Meditations - March 20th

MONDAY, FOURTH WEEK IN LENT

ON OUR SAVIOUR’S AGONY AND BLOODY SWEAT 

Consider first, what pangs, what anguish, what floods of sorrow overwhelmed the soul of our dear Redeemer during his prayer in this his last night. Alas! no tongue can sufficiently express, nor heart conceive them! However, that thou mayest make some sort of judgment of them from their effects, consider how they cast him into a mortal agony; how they forced from his body a wonderful sweat of blood, which not only imbrued all his garments, but also trickled down from his body upon the ground, on which he lay prostrate in prayer. O how inconceivable a torture must he have endured in his interior, when the pangs of his soul had such a strong operation exteriorly, and produced such strange effects in the body! But why all this agony, dear Lord? Why these pangs? Why this prodigious sweat of blood? Was not the death of the cross sufficient for our redemption? Why then these anticipated sorrows? Thy love alone can account for them. O blessed be thy infinite charity!

Consider 2ndly, how bitter were the ingredients of this chalice which our Saviour so much dreaded to drink. Ah! my soul, they were bitter indeed. He had at this time before his eyes a most lively apprehension, a most clear and express representation of all and every particular injury and indignity, stripe and torment, that he was afterward successively to endure in the whole course of his passion, now all at once assaulting his soul, and making him feel beforehand all the sorrows which afterwards only came one by one. But what was more terrible to our Saviour was the clear sight and lively sense he had then of all the sins and abominations of the whole world, from the first to the last, with all their filthiness and horror, all now laid upon him as if they were his own; and himself, like the 'emissary goat,' Levit. xvi. 21, charged with all the maledictions due to them, and with the wrath of his Father justly enkindled by them. Sweet Jesus, any one of these monsters is more odious to thee than hell. And how then must thou be affected, when thou not only hast before thy eyes this infinite number of millions of millions of these odious monsters, mortal enemies of thy Father, mustered up all against thee, but also feelest their enormous weight laid upon thy shoulders? O what a share had my sins in this tragical scene; how did they depress the soul of my Redeemer! How did they force from him this shower of blood, as if all the pores of his body were turned into eyes to weep for my sins. O let thy agony and bloody sweat teach me effectually how heinous my sins are in thy eyes, and in what manner I ought to bewail them.

Consider 3rdly, another bitter ingredient of that cup of thy Redeemer, which was the foresight he then had of the little sense the greatest part even of Christians would have of all his sufferings, of their ingratitude for his infinite charity, of their abuse of all those graces he was going to purchase for them with the last drop of his blood, of their perverseness in taking occasion from his very passion to sin more freely, and to draw down the more dreadful judgments upon their own heads; and in fine, of the eternal loss of innumerable souls, who, notwithstanding all his sufferings, through their obstinacy in sin, and final impenitence, would incur the second and everlasting death. Consider that every one of those poor souls was more dear to Christ than his own life, since he parted with his life to save them. What a cruel anguish then must it have been to his tender and charitable heart to see so many of them blindly and wilfully running into the bottomless pit of endless and irremediable evils, and plunging themselves for ever into the flames of hell! No wonder after this that so many lamentable objects presenting themselves at once before the eyes of his soul, and joined with all those mentioned in the foregoing consideration, should cast him into a mortal agony and bloody sweat.

Conclude to admire and adore the wondrous ways of God in bringing about the redemption of man. Embrace with all the affections of thy heart the infinite charity of thy Redeemer, which shines forth so bright in this mystery. And see thou be no longer one of that unhappy number who repay all his mercy and love with sin and ingratitude.