Category 14 (Lent and Easter)

KEEP THE FAITH Subscribe to Catholic Update today at Subscriptions.Liguori.org to receive one or more copies of each issue. Copies of more than 350 past issues of Catholic Update are available, with discounts provided for larger purchases. See the complete list at Liguori.org/Catholic-Update. not put us to the test." What is the test? We're telling God something like, "God, in my life I know you can test me the way you tested Jesus. I know you can make me sweat blood, but cut me a little slack. Make these things a little easier for me in my life so I don't have to taste that complete darkness." See, though, that darkness is the test of the moral athlete, inside of our moral loneliness. It's not the test of our physical capacity to withstand pain. at's why we need to move beyond the scourging metaphor of the Stations of the Cross. ere's much more to the stations. e passion is not about the blood and the ropes and the whipping and how much Jesus endured. It's about something we're meant to imitate. It's about our moral and emotional athleticism the next time we have temptation. It's about the test inside of love, and it happens in a garden. PERMISSION TO PUBLISH: REV. JOSEPH R. BINZER, VICAR GENERAL, ARCHDIOCESE OF CINCINNATI, DECEMBER 11, 2007. "AND TO STRENGTHEN HIM AN ANGEL FROM HEAVEN APPEARED TO HIM." LUKE 22:43 THE MOMENT OF GRACE About a month before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered for his moral bravery, he recounted one of the many threatening phone calls he received. He said the phone rang and a person said, "If you come here we're going to kill you." And he said, in telling the story, that he had heard those life-threatening calls many times before, "but that night, for whatever reason, it shook me to my roots. I couldn't go back to sleep. I brewed some coffee. I drank the whole pot." He said: "I began to cry at the kitchen table, and I lost all my courage." He said: "I put my head in my hands and I thought, I can't do this anymore. I don't want to die." And he said: "At that moment I felt this strength in me that I had never felt before. I knew what to do, what I needed to do." You see the Agony in the Garden, and it's only aer the agony that the angel can come. See, then Jesus got up. en he was the athlete who was ready. en he could walk to his passion. When Jesus le the Last Supper room, he couldn't do it. at was the great transition. Only aer he had broken down, had sweat the blood, had told his Father many times, "I don't want to do this," he finally broke down and accepted it. How many of us, in our own way, experience that frustration, that same sense of abandonment? Yet, at the moment of acceptance, God's liberating grace flows. As Luke says of Jesus in the Garden, the angel comes. at's a deep theology of grace. Fr. Ronald Rolheiser is a Missionary Oblate of Mary Immaculate and president of the Oblate School of eology in San Antonio, TX. He's a lecturer and writer, both of award-winning newspaper columns on several continents and of numerous books. Please share or recycle this Catholic Update. 09/23 DIG DEEPER In what way was the Agony a preparation for what would follow? • How can Jesus' Agony be a key for our own encounter with the sacred? • Name some practical ways to live the three tests of the Garden. THE SLEEPING APOSTLES We have examples in Scripture of the rich things in the Garden. Luke's Gospel, for instance, says, "Jesus went into the garden and he told his disciples, 'Pray that you may not undergo the test'" (Luke 22:40). Rather than telling them to join in his prayer, we're supposed to learn something by watching Jesus. en he has this drama in the Garden and finally gives his life over to his father. He says: "Not my will but yours be done." en he turns around and, as Luke says, "they were all asleep." Out of what? Tiredness? No. Luke says they were asleep out of grief (22:45), sheer sorrow. at's an incredible line. ey were asleep out of what? ey were asleep out of depression. It was just too depressing to get the lesson. Most of the time when we're asleep, we're not asleep physically. When we don't get something, it's just too depressing to get.

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