Who did Jesus Christ pray to in the Garden of Gethsemane? Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane in Russian painting

That evening, Christ and his disciples came to the Garden of Gethsemane, which was not far from Jerusalem. Passing between the trees of the garden, the disciples noticed that the face of Jesus Christ had changed a lot. There was a terrifying sorrow and deep anguish in His eyes. They had never seen Him like this before. Then Jesus said to them: My soul is grieving to death. Then He asked the disciples to wait for Him, and He Himself moved a little forward and, falling to the ground, began to mournfully cry out to God the Father.

Christ knew that the time of His death for the sins of the people was drawing near. The most terrible thing for Him was not that He would die, and not even that this death would be terribly painful when His hands and feet were nailed to a wooden cross and then He was hanged to gradually die, bleeding. Something else was much more terrible for Him. He was to take upon Himself the sins of all mankind.

What that meant, and how terrible it was for Him, we may never fully understand. Jesus Christ, holy and sinless, had to take upon Himself the torment for all the guilt, for all the evil ever done by people.

The mental anguish that awaited Him was incomparably heavier than the physical suffering that the people subjected Him to during . And in this Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus Christ had to make a final decision: go for it, or give up this suffering.

Prayer of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane.

The Gospel records the words of Jesus with which He prayed:

“My Father! if possible, let this cup pass from me; however, not as I will, but as You.”

If there had been any other way to save mankind, then Jesus would not have taken the sins of people upon Himself. This "chalice" was too heavy even for Him. But there was no other way to save people, and He understood this. Therefore, after some time spent in a difficult internal struggle, Christ again prays like this:

“My Father! if this cup cannot pass me by, lest I drink it, Thy will be done.”

With these words He made the final decision. In this Garden of Gethsemane, the fate of all mankind was decided. Christ accepted what awaited Him now. If He did not do this, then all people would be condemned to hell for their sins. But Christ loved people so much that He chose to endure this condemnation Himself in order to enable us to avoid it.

The blood of Jesus Christ dripped from His face in the form of bloody sweat.

The gospel says that during this prayer and final decision, Jesus experienced such a strong state of agony and inner struggle that His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. This rare phenomenon of "bloody sweat" in medicine is known as hematidrosis, when blood leaks out through the sweat ducts from the blood capillaries due to strong emotional stress.

But now the decision has been made, and Jesus, having calmed down, returns to the disciples and says:

“The hour has come, and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners; Get up, let's go: behold, he who betrays me has come near."

Bibliography:

Gospel of Matthew 26:38-39
Gospel of Matthew 26:42
Gospel of Luke 22:44

After the Last Supper - His last meal, at which the Lord established the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist - He went with the apostles to the Mount of Olives.

Descending into the hollow of the Kidron Stream, the Savior entered with them into the Garden of Gethsemane. He loved this place and often gathered here to talk with his students.

The Lord longed for solitude, so that in prayer to His Heavenly Father he would pour out His heart. Leaving most of the disciples at the entrance to the garden, Christ took three of them - Peter, James and John - with Him. These apostles were with the Son of God on Tabor and saw Him in glory. Now the witnesses of the Transfiguration of the Lord were to become witnesses of His spiritual suffering.
Addressing the disciples, the Savior said: "" (Gospel of Mark chapter 14, verse 34).
We cannot comprehend the sorrows and anguish of the Savior in all their depth. It was not just the sadness of a man who knows about his imminent death. It was the grief of the God-man for a fallen creation that had tasted death and was ready to doom its Creator to death. Stepping aside a little, the Lord began to pray, saying: "".
Rising from prayer, the Lord returned to His three disciples. He wanted to find comfort for Himself in their willingness to watch with Him, in their sympathy and devotion to Him. But the disciples were asleep. Then Christ calls them to prayer: "".

Twice more the Lord departed from the disciples into the depths of the garden and repeated the same prayer.

The grief of Christ was so great, and the prayer was so intense that drops of bloody sweat fell from His face to the ground.
In these difficult moments, as the Gospel tells, "".

Having finished the prayer, the Savior came to His disciples and again found them sleeping.
", - He addresses them, - ".

At that very moment, the lights of lanterns and torches began to peep through the foliage of the trees. A crowd of people appeared with swords and stakes. They were sent by the chief priests and scribes to seize Jesus, and apparently expected serious resistance.
Judas walked ahead of the armed men. He was sure that after the Last Supper he would find the Lord here in the Garden of Gethsemane. And I wasn't wrong. The traitor agreed in advance with the soldiers: "".

Separating from the crowd, Judas approached Christ with the words: "Rejoice, Rabbi," and kissed the Savior.

The betrayal has already taken place, but we see how Christ is trying to cause repentance in the soul of His foolish disciple.

Meanwhile, the guards approached. And the Lord asked the guards who they were looking for. From the crowd they answered: "Jesus of Nazareth." "It is I," came the calm reply of Christ. At these words, the warriors and servants stepped back in fear and fell to the ground. Then the Savior said to them: if they are looking for Him, then let them take it, but let the disciples leave freely. The apostles wanted to protect their Teacher. Peter had a sword with him. He hit the servant of the high priest named Malchus with it and cut off his right ear.
But Jesus stopped the disciples: "". And touching the ear of the wounded slave, he healed him. Turning to Peter, the Lord said: "And turning to the armed crowd, Christ said:" ".

The soldiers tied the Savior and took him to the high priests. Then the apostles, leaving their Divine Teacher, fled in horror.

The bitter words of the Savior, spoken by him on the eve of the Gethsemane night, came true: "".

Christ accepts this bitter cup of suffering and painful death on the cross voluntarily, for the sake of the salvation of all mankind.

Complete collection and description: prayer in the garden of Gethsemane for the spiritual life of a believer.

Prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane

Saint Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky)

Do not think, do not think that only on the Cross, in indescribable suffering, did the Lord endure terrible torment. Know that His torment, even more terrible than His suffering on the Cross, began here in the Garden of Gethsemane, by the light of the moon.

Oh, how he suffered! Oh, how tormented! Oh, how He cried to His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane: “My Father! if possible, let this cup pass from me; but not as I will, but as You” (Matt. 26:39). Bold people, perhaps they will think: what cowardice! Why did He ask the Father to carry the cup of suffering past Him, if it was for these sufferings that He came into the world? Bold people even say that on the Cross the Lord did not experience any suffering.

In the early times of Christianity, there were heretics, docets, who taught that the body of Jesus was not genuine, but a ghostly body (dokeu - to appear; hence the name of the docets). Of course, teaching so wickedly, they were sure that the Lord Jesus Christ did not suffer any suffering, for he did not have a genuine and true human body, and we know, we are deeply convinced that He was a true man, as well as a true God.

But not everyone understands what the Lord experienced in His heart, not everyone knows why His prayer to God the Father was so painful. Not everyone knows why bloody sweat dripped from His face.

And I have to explain this to you.

This is not a metaphor - this is a reality that they cry with bloody tears, that bloody sweat drips. This happens when human torments reach such a terrible force of tension that no other torments can compare with them.

And so, already from the fact that bloody sweat dripped from the face of the Savior, we know how terrible, how amazing were His spiritual sufferings before bodily sufferings.

Why did Christ our God languish so in anticipation of His suffering on the Cross?

Think, if one of you had to take upon himself the sins of a hundred people around you, and give an answer for them before God, what horror you would be filled with, how the sins of others would crush you, for which you must give an answer to God.

Don't you know that the Lord Jesus Christ took upon Himself the sins of the whole world, of all mankind? Have you never heard the words of the great prophet Isaiah: “He was wounded for our sins and tormented for our iniquities; the punishment of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we were healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Didn't you read what was written in the first epistle of the Apostle Peter: "He Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, so that we, being delivered from sins, would live in righteousness: by His stripes you were healed" (1 Pet. 2:24). So, already in the Garden of Gethsemane, He languished and suffered under the terrible weight of the sins of the whole world. He was crushed unspeakably, unbearably crushed by the sins of the world, which He took upon Himself, for which he had to become a victim of God's justice before God, for only He and no one else could atone for the sins of the whole world.

That is why bloody sweat dripped from His forehead, that is why He suffered so much, praying to His Father: “My Father! if possible, let this cup pass from me…” (Matthew 26:39).

And immediately He spoke differently: “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You” (Matt. 26:39). – He surrendered Himself entirely to the will of God, and sins crushed Him, tormented Him, tormented Him, and He fell in exhaustion under the weight of these sins.

“Nowhere am I more struck by the majesty and holiness of Jesus than here. I would not know all the greatness of His blessings, if He did not reveal before me what they cost him. We did not know the whole greatness of Christ's sacrifice if we did not know what He experienced in the terrible hour of His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.

And His disciples were sleeping… What does it mean that they were sleeping? Why were they sleeping? The simple explanation is that they were very weary from the midnight march across the Kidron stream, they were in weakness and, as the Gospel of Luke says, they were overwhelmed with sadness - they slept from sadness.

But let's think about whether there were other, higher, mysterious reasons for the fact that they were sleeping, was it not arranged by God?

It is very likely that it was. Perhaps God wanted them to only have a glimpse of the suffering that Jesus endured in the Garden of Gethsemane. Probably, all the terrible, bottomless depth of Jesus' prayer should be hidden from the eyes of the world. Probably so...

But still they were needed as witnesses, even though they were very incomplete, of the Gethsemane suffering of the soul of Jesus.

They slept, but, waking up three times at the word of Jesus, they, of course, did not immediately fall asleep again and in the bright light of the full moon they saw how Jesus prayed, heard the terrible words of His prayer.

For if not so, how would the evangelist know about what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane, how would he write what we read, how would they know about the drops of bloody sweat that dripped from His forehead, how would they know the words of His prayer?

They were needed as witnesses: on Mount Tabor they were witnesses of His Divine glory, in the garden of Gethsemane they were witnesses to the whole abyss of the suffering of His soul before He ascended the Cross.

So, remember that in the Garden of Gethsemane the first and, perhaps, the most terrible part of the sufferings of Christ took place, for on the Cross He behaved much more cheerfully.

“We worship Your Cross, Master, and we glorify Your holy Resurrection!”

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Garden of Gethsemane

On the Prayer of Christ and His Human Weakness

On Maundy Thursday of Holy Week, we remember some of the most important events from the earthly life of Christ. Including - a prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.

The Gospel story about the Gethsemane prayer, which is sometimes also called the prayer for the cup, in the Gospel of Mark, obviously, has come down to us from the Apostle Peter; according to the testimony of the early Christian author Papias of Hierapolis, Mark was a companion of the great apostle and, apparently, his gospel is built on the stories of Peter.

And he took with him Peter, James, and John; and began to be horrified and to grieve. And he said to them: My soul is grieving to death; stay here and stay awake. And, going a little way, he fell to the ground and prayed that, if possible, this hour would pass from him; and said: Abba Father! everything is possible for you; carry this cup past Me; but not what I want, but what You. Returns and finds them sleeping, and says to Peter: Simon! are you sleeping? could you not stay awake for one hour? Watch and pray so that you do not fall into temptation: the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And, moving away again, he prayed, saying the same word. And when he returned, he again found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy, and they did not know what to answer him. And he comes a third time and says to them: Do you still sleep and rest? It's over, the hour has come: behold, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up, let's go; behold, he who betrays me has come near(Mark 14:33-42).

There is an amazing stamp of authenticity on this narration; it fully corresponds to what even in our time New Testament scholars call the "criterion of inconvenience." This criterion is that certain testimonies are inconvenient for the early Church, and therefore they have only one explanation: everything really happened. No one would invent Jesus grieving and horrified in anticipation of a painful death and begging to be delivered from such a fate, if possible.

The gods people make up don't behave like that; they are more like supermen, spider-men and other characters of popular culture who, brave and strong, come to the rescue of their fans, so that shreds fly from the villains through the back streets.

The Divine Savior, crushed by grief, who not only will not deal with the villains, but will Himself die at their hands, who Himself prays for deliverance - and does not receive it - this is not at all the image that people create in their imagination.

The apostles in this episode (as well as in some others) do not look the best: they fell asleep from sadness and deserved a rebuke from the Lord. Only they themselves could talk like that about the apostles - in the early Church, the apostles were surrounded by understandable reverence, and it would never have occurred to anyone to invent such “compromising evidence” about them.

This story has always been the subject of some bewilderment - and ridicule of unbelievers. What kind of God is this, if He mourns and is horrified in the face of death, like an ordinary person, and a person not the most brave: many heroes and martyrs in history went to their death much calmer, sometimes with bravado and mockery of the executioners. The whole Roman procedure of crucifixion was thought out in such a way as to break the will and spirit of the most determined fighters, but Jesus does not show Himself as a fighter even in the garden.

Why? What happens in Gethsemane tells us something very important about the Incarnation. First of all, the Lord Jesus is not God pretending to be a man or acting through a man, it is God who actually became a man. In the movie "Avatar" a person connects to an alien body and acts through it in a tribe of aliens. Having completed the task, he can easily turn off, end his virtual life. And the Incarnation is real. In Jesus Christ, God really became a man, with a human soul and body, and He really became available to the same spiritual and bodily suffering that people experience in the face of betrayal, injustice, pain and death.

He completely and completely took our place - put Himself in the same conditions in which we are, and completed our Atonement, showing perfect love and obedience to God where we show malice and opposition.

Therefore, in Gethsemane, He undergoes an absolutely genuine and absolutely human suffering. Sometimes they say: "But He knew that He would rise again." Of course, he knew, and told his students about it. But we also know that we will be resurrected - this is also clearly promised to us by the heavenly Father. Does this make fear and suffering less real?

Christ fully shares all the suffering of the world, all human pain, physical and spiritual. Any person in the face of betrayal, abandonment, torment, death, can now know that Christ is with him, He descended to the very bottom of pain and sorrow to be with everyone who suffers. Not only with heroes who bravely go to their deaths. With all those who are crushed, confused and discouraged, who seem to be completely crushed by longing and horror. Christ looks weak because He is with the weak, yearning because He is with the yearning, terrified because He is with those who are crushed by horror. He descends to them to the very bottom of mental and bodily suffering in order to take each by the hand and lead them to the eternal joy of the Resurrection.

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Prayer for a cup

Christmas
Candlemas
Baptism
Temptation of Christ
The call of the twelve apostles
The first miracle of Jesus Christ
Sermon on the Mount
Wonders
Transfiguration
Giving Prayer to the Disciples
Prophecy of the Second Coming
Entrance to Jerusalem
The expulsion of merchants from the temple
Passion of Christ
- Anointing of Jesus with Peace
- The Last Supper
- Prayer for a cup
- Pilate's Judgment
- way of the cross
- crucifixion
- Burial of Christ
- Descent into hell
Sunday
Appearances of Christ to the Disciples
Ascension

Prayer for a cup (Gethsemane prayer) - the prayer of Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, described in the Gospels. From the point of view of Christian theologians, it is an expression of the fact that Jesus had two wills: divine and human.

gospel story

Prayer for a cup described by all the evangelists except John, who only reports that " Jesus went out with His disciples beyond the Kidron stream, where there was a garden» (John 18:1).

All three evangelists describe the prayer of Christ in the same way, only Luke mentions the appearance of an angel and the bloody sweat of Jesus. Also, only Luke names the reason for the sleep of the disciples of Jesus Christ - “ found them sleeping in sorrow».

Matthew and Mark tell of Jesus praying three times:

First time He prayed for the cup of suffering to be turned away from Him - “ let this cup pass from me; however, not as I want, but as You»;
Second time already expresses direct obedience to the will of God (Luke sent an angel to him to strengthen Him in this will) and exclaims - “ let your will be done»;
Third time he repeats his second prayer and returns to the disciples to say about the approach of the traitor: Behold, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up, let's go; behold, he who betrays me has come near».

Scene

According to the gospel narrative, Jesus came for his prayer before his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, located at the bottom of the slope of the Mount of Olives near the Kidron stream, east of the center of Jerusalem. For this reason, in Christianity, the Garden of Gethsemane is revered as one of the places associated with the Passion of Christ and is a place of Christian pilgrimage.

The place where Jesus Christ prayed is currently located inside the Catholic Churches of all nations, built in 1919 - 1924. In front of her altar is a stone on which, according to legend, Christ prayed on the night of his arrest.

Theological interpretation

Theologians see in the words of the Gethsemane prayer of Jesus confirmation that he had two wills: divine (common with God the Father) and human (received in connection with his incarnation). Athanasius the Great believed that Christ's prayer for the cup: by this he shows two wills: the human, inherent in the flesh, and the Divine, inherent in God; and the human, according to the weakness of the flesh, renounces suffering, and His Divine will is ready for it».

The Gethsemane prayer of Jesus Christ, from the point of view of theologians, was an expression of his fear of death, inherent in human nature.

When the human will refused to accept death, and the Divine will allowed this manifestation of humanity, then the Lord, in accordance with His human nature, was in struggle and fear. He prayed to avoid death. But since His Divine will desired that His human will accept death, suffering became free and according to the humanity of Christ..

Theophylact of Bulgaria, in his interpretation of the Gospel of Matthew, writes:

He desires that this cup pass by, either as evidence that He, as a man, naturally turns away from death, as was said above, or because He did not want the Jews to fall into such a grave sin, which should have been followed by the destruction of the temple and death of the people. He wants, however, that the will of the Father be done, so that we also know that we must obey God rather than do our own will, even if nature leads to the opposite. Or for this he prayed that a cup would pass from Him, so that sin would not be imputed to the Jews, just as Stephen, having learned from Him, prayed for those who stoned him, so that this would not be imputed to them as a sin..

There is an opinion that during the Gethsemane prayer, the devil, who departed from Jesus " before time"After his temptation in the wilderness (Luke 4:13), he again approached Him with temptations, trying to deflect Him from the forthcoming feat of suffering on the Cross.

In fine arts

Prayer for a cup refers to popular subjects in Western European painting. Usually, when depicting this plot, the artists exactly followed the gospel narrative and depicted a praying Christ, and an angel with a cup in his hand, three sleeping disciples and Judas and guards walking in the distance.

The artists sought to emphasize the tragic loneliness of Jesus Christ in prayer for the cup. He, kneeling, is always the center of the composition, Judas with guards was placed in the background, and the sleeping disciples were in the foreground, emphasizing in their sleep the significance of the words of Christ addressed to them: “Watch and pray so as not to fall into temptation: the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak”(the sleep of the disciples is opposed to the wakefulness and prayer of Christ).

In iconography, instructions for writing Jesus praying in Gethsemane are contained in the Herminia by Dionysius Furnoagrafiot (early 18th century):

“In the midst of a garden with trees, Christ is on his knees, raising his hands and eyes to heaven. From His face drops bloody sweat to the ground. Above Him, in the light, an angel is visible, stretching out her hands to Him. Behind Christ, Peter, James and John are sleeping: but the Savior came up to them, and with one hand wakes Peter, and in the other he holds a charter with the words: is it not possible for you to stay with me for one hour»

Notes

Garden of Gethsemane. Church of all nations
Athanasius the Great, On the appearance in the flesh of God the Word and against the Arians// Creations, vol. III. M., 1994, p. 273
John of Damascus, PG, t. 94, col. 1073 BC
Archbishop Averky, New Testament Scripture Study Guide
Herminia Dionysia Furnoagrafiota

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On Maundy Thursday of Holy Week, we remember some of the most important events from the earthly life of Christ. Including - a prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.