Friday, March 5, 2021

Preview: The Agony and The Incarnation

On Monday, March 8, Anna Mitchell and I will continue our discussion of St. Thomas More's "The Sadness of Christ" on the Son Rise Morning ShowListen live here or on your local EWTN affiliate at about 6:50 a.m. Central, 7:50 a.m. Eastern.

The Sadness of Christ, with an excellent introduction by Gerard Wegemer, is readily available from Scepter Publishers.

On Monday, we'll look at the section in which St. Thomas More examines the emotional and very human reaction of Jesus to the suffering He knows He will soon endure. The example of Erasmus's 1498 interpretation of the Agony in the Garden certainly influenced More's interpretation: Erasmus had contended, against John Colet's view, that Jesus had really suffered fear and anguish because of the suffering He was facing. More adopts the same view, answering the objections of those who would say that Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, should not display such weakness.

More cites Matthew 26:36-38 and Mark 14:32-34 as Jesus takes Peter and the Sons of Zebedee, John and James with him farther into the Garden of Gethsemane:

For a huge mass of troubles took possession of the tender and gentle body of our most Holy Savior. He knew that His ordeal was now imminent and just about to overtake Him: the treacherous betrayer, the bitter enemies, binding ropes, false accusations, slanders, blows, thorns, nails, the cross, and horrible tortures stretched out over many hours. (p. 7)

Then he answers several objections: 

Since He is God, why would He be so sad and afraid? He knows He will triumph!

More replies: "He was no less really a man than He was really God." He'd felt hunger, thirst, and weariness before as any other man would; why would He not experience fear and dread?

Other objections: 

Since He had told the disciples "not to be afraid of those who can kill the body only" and 

Since martyrs have rushed to their deaths "eagerly and joyfully", why was Jesus, "the prototype and leader of martyrs . . . so terrified at the approach of pain, so shaken, so utterly downcast"?

Why didn't He "provide a good example"?

More answers these objections: 

Jesus wanted His disciples to be both courageous AND prudent; He had also told them "If you are persecuted in one city, flee to another" in Matthew 10:23. It would be foolhardy to seek out martyrdom, and a Christian disciple should not do so.

The holy martyrs did fear torture and death. More offers the example of St. Paul who was willing to die for Christ, nevertheless did everything to preserve his life, even to appealing as a Roman citizen to a higher authority for his final trial.

(More was not rushing into martyrdom himself and feared the suffering he would endure if condemned of treason--being hanged, drawn, and quartered--and he tried to negotiate with Henry VIII and Cromwell, maintaining silence about his objections to the oaths. He was following the example he highlighted in these replies to common objections.)

More concludes that Jesus was providing a good example: "the fear of death and torments carried no stigma of guilt but rather is an affliction of the sort Christ came to suffer, not to escape". 

He had become a man like us in all things but sin.

Like Erasmus in 1498, More tries to describe how the Divine Nature and Human Nature of Jesus worked together, saying that

His divinity moderated its influence on the humanity for such a time and in such a way that He was able to yield to the passions of our frail humanity . . ." (p. 13)

That might seem a mechanical explanation, dividing Divine and human functions in the one Person. But More is trying to explain how Jesus was bearing witness to the mystery and the truth of His Incarnation. More briefly explores the heresies that divided the early Church, of Arius and others who either denied Jesus's Divinity or His humanity, warning against choosing either extreme (Scylla and Charybdis).

Finally, Saint Thomas More argues that Jesus endured these agonies for the sake of those in His Church through the ages who would be weak, offering Himself as an example to them, suffering for them, and even making "Himself weak for the sake of the weak", taking "care of other weak men by means of His own weakness." He had their welfare so much in mind that He endured the Agony of the Garden (p. 17) to help them face their weakness and persevere.

Image Credit: (Public Domain): The Agony in the Garden attributed to Francesco Trevisani (1656-1746)

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