MEDITATION ON THE PASSION: And They Came To A Farm Called Gethsemani. And He Saith To His Disciples: Sit You Here, While I Pray

WAGNER, Veit 

Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane 

1498

Then Jesus came with them into a country place which is called Gethsemani; and he said to his disciples: Sit you here, till I go yonder and pray. Mt.xxvi.

And they came to a farm called Gethsemani. And he saith to his disciples: Sit you here, while I pray. Mk.xiv.

When Jesus had said these things, he went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron, where there was a garden, into which he entered with his disciples. Jn.xviii.

Behold the place where Christ began his passion:

First: Near unto a village or farm.

Secondly: In Gethsemane, which signifies a fat valley.

Thirdly: In the Garden.

For through sin we got an unclean village, that is, worldly and frail things, which by their own instinct and nature slide down to earth again, and Christ would begin our redemption from thence, whence we were fallen through sin.

Gethsemane or the fat valley as it doth rightly signify the valley of mercy, so it doth plainly declare that the passion of Christ had need of great mercy and clemency, which changed this world being full of miseries, into a place flowing with mercy.

Consider then that this world is like unto a dirty valley, in which is much dirt and filth, with which men being polluted do forsake God, but to such men as follow Christ, this same world is like a shop of the mercies of God, & of our merits, in which so long as we live mercy id offered abundantly, and such rewards gotten by good works as never shall have end.

But it was a garden wherein Christ prayed:

Adam sinned in a garden, & in a garden we have all offended. For what is the world but a little garden, pleasant to behold, wherein divers herbs and fair flowers do delight the eyes, but not the mind. All things which the world admireth  are buds and flowers, which, as they take their beginning from the earth, so in a short time they wither away.

To be brief, Christ carried his Disciples forth to the place of his passion, being the last place to which he lead his Apostles, that thou mayest know thereby that Christ doth earnestly require of the that with great diligence and study thou shouldest meditate and imitate his passion.

Pray unto thy Lord that thou mayest despise this world, which was all the cause of the passion of Christ.

Fr. Francis Costerus S.J. 1616