"Stay here, and keep watch"

Thoughts before the Blessed Sacrament, 0200-0400, part 1:

Now I feel the weariness, Lord, the weakness, which your disciples felt and were overcome by. I believe, you felt it, too, Lord, but the trial ahead of you outweighed your longing to rest. You would rest - your body, at least - in the tomb.

What an odd happenstance in reading the "wrong" day's Psalms yesterday for the Office of Readings. Otherwise I wouldn't have read, in Ps 44: "Yet you have crushed us in a place of sorrows, and covered us with the shadow of death."

I'm reminded of Michael Card, from whom I learned long ago that the Garden of Gethsemani, on the Mount of Olives, was so named because of being the place where the olives were crushed - pressed - to extract their oil. How fitting that Jesus should be crushed there by the weight of our sins. What agony!

We have too often refused to be crushed, to be pressed into holy oil with which you might anoint those around us, Lord. We have chosen instead to take the less challenging way, not seeing how it ends up ultimately being more painful. The pressure you felt at Gethsemani was the weight of our sins, which you allowed to crush you into perfect conformance with the Father's will, so that we (I) would not have to bear it's fullness. I know that my soul could not survive the burden of my sin. Neither could your earthly body, Lord, for you died bearing it.