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Daily reflections for Lenten Easter, written by Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI.

As Jesus and his disciples enter the Garden of Gethsemane, he tells them, stay awake. Watch. The implication is that they’re about to learn something. A lesson is to be taught. But as we know, they fell asleep not because the hour was late and they were tired, nor even because of the wine they drunk at the supper.

They fell asleep, Luke says, out of sheer sorrow. They fell asleep because they were disappointed, confused, depressed. This is one of the perennial temptations we have in life, to fall asleep out of sorrow.

Most times when we give in to weakness or commit sin, we do so not out of malice or bad intent, but out of despair. Why are we sometimes so petty? Why are we sometimes less than the gracious, understanding and forgiving persons we would like to be?

Simply put, some deep disappointment has rendered us asleep to what’s highest inside of our own selves. Depression has rendered us powerless to our own goodness.

It’s not easy to stay awake to the lesson Jesus was trying to teach in the Garden of Gethsemane. Because of sleep, the disciples missed the lesson they were supposed to learn from watching Jesus in his prayer. And what was that lesson?

They were supposed to see and grasp the intrinsic connection between suffering and transformation and the necessity in that process of being willing to carry tension and disappointment without giving in to despair.