[continued from yesterday]
...The third occasion is that on which Our Lord describes Himself as troubled, and is one full of mystery.
Some Gentiles had come up to the festival. They asked that they might be introduced to Him. An Apostle spoke for them, and He answered with a few words in the middle of which these occur:
"Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say: Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause I came into this hour. Father, glorify my name."What, here, can the cause of His trouble be?
Is it not that which everyone must feel who sees the number of those who have not yet known the name of God and His Christ?
So was St. Paul continually troubled; so St. Francis Xavier in the midst of the Eastern heathen; so the many saints who have burnt with zeal for the house of God, and have spent themselves on its account....
Again, early in the course of the Last Supper He is troubled. After He had washed the feet of His disciples, and had spoken the example He had given, St. John says of Him: "When Jesus had said these things he was troubled in spirit: and he testified and said: Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you shall betray me" (John xiii. 21).
Surely a legitimate trouble is this, whether we consider the treachery of the friend, or the consequences to the traitor. And let us not make too much of the second of these alternatives; that the first ate into the soul of Our Lord is clearly evidenced from the words of Our Lord spoken to the traitor in the Garden:
"Friend, whereto art thou come? - Judas, dost thou betray the Son of Man?"Treachery must always give trouble, even though we may have the courage at the same time to "rejoice that we are accounted worthy to suffer for the name of Christ"; but the treachery of a friend is the cruellest of all....
[continued tomorrow]
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From The School of Love and Other Essays
by The Most Reverend Alban Goodier, S.J.
Burns, Oates, & Washburn, Ltd. 1918
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