Transcript of the Video Above

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

In the Gethsemane accounts, we’re told that right after being strengthened by an angel, Jesus gets up off the ground and walks with courage to face the ordeal that awaits him. His agony and the strengthening he receives within it readied him for the pain that lay ahead.

Indeed, at the time of Jesus, the word agony had a double sense. Beyond its more obvious meaning, it also referred to a particular readying that an athlete would do just before entering the arena or stadium. An athlete would work up a certain sweat, agonia, with the idea that this exercise and the lather it produced would concentrate and ready both his energies and muscles for the contest.

The Gospel writers want us to have this same image of Jesus as he leaves the garden of Gethsemane. His agony has brought about a, certain emotional, physical and spiritual lather, so that he is now readied a focus athlete, properly prepared to enter the battle. Moreover, because his strengthening brings a certain divine energy, he is indeed more ready than any athlete.

Good Fridays await us all. We must work up the spiritual lather that readies our souls and bodies for the contest that lies ahead.