Albrecht Altdorfer: The Agony in the Garden, from the monastery of St. Florian in Enns (Linz), Austria

The Agony of anticipation, knowing what was just ahead, knowing that being God would not protect him from the physical sufferings – Might He have been tempted to doubt His own identity, His ultimate victory over death in those hours of praying, alone, in the Garden, while His closest friends, who, loving Him, still did not understand, slept?

Suffering so intense that he sweated blood – yet His thoughts in those final moments before His arrest and tortures began were for us! He prayed for us in the Garden – not only “If it be Thy will, let this cup pass from me!” but also, “Be with them – make them one as we are One… Sanctify them in the truth; thy word is truth…that they may all be one, even as thouh, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe…”