Pope: Obedience and freedom on the Mount of Olives
In the dark night of the Mount of Olives, “Jesus resolved the false opposition between
obedience and freedom and opened the path to freedom”, said Pope Benedict XVI this
Holy Thursday, during Missa in coena Domini, Mass of Our Lord’s Supper. “We
think we are free and truly ourselves only if we follow our own will. God appears
as the opposite of our freedom”. This he said, is “the fundamental lie which perverts
life”.
As sun set over the Tiber, Pope Benedict XVI crossed Rome to the church
dedicated to the Saviour, the Cathedral of St John Lateran, his seat as Bishop of
Rome. There among the faithful of his diocese, the Holy Father marked the end of
Lent and the beginning of the sacred "Triduum" (three days) of Holy Week: From sundown
Holy Thursday to Vespers on Easter Sunday, the memorial of Christ’s Passion, death
and Resurrection.
Mass of Our Lord’s Last Supper begins in the evening, because
Passover began at sundown; it commemorates Our Lord's institution of the Holy Eucharist
at the Last Supper in the Upper Room. But not only, as Pope Benedict pointed out in
his homily: “Holy Thursday also belongs to the dark night of the Mount of Olives”.
It
is into this dark night that Jesus goes, in prayer to encounter the darkness of death.
“Night”, said the Pope, “signifies lack of communication, a situation where people
do not see each other”, it is “a symbol of incomprehension, of an obscuring of the
truth”, where evil has room to grow. Jesus enters this night to overcome it.
Pope
Benedict then turned to the prayer of Jesus on the Mount of Olives, saying that from
it we can learn trust in God who is goodness and power. “Christians, in kneeling enter
into Jesus’ prayer”. “When menaced by the power of evil, as they kneel, they are upright
before the world, while as sons and daughters, they kneel before the Father”.
Furthermore,
he added, Jesus’ dread on the Mount of Olives is of one “who is completely pure and
holy as he sees the entire flood of this world’s evil bursting upon him”. But who
“also sees me and prays for me”. This moment of mortal anguish, said Pope Benedict
“is an essential part of the process of redemption”. “Jesus struggles with the Father.
He struggles with himself. He struggles for us”. Listen:
Below
the full text of Pope Benedict XVI’s Homily Mass of the Lord’s Supper
Dear
Brothers and Sisters! Holy Thursday is not only the day of the institution of
the Most Holy Eucharist, whose splendour bathes all else and in some ways draws it
to itself. To Holy Thursday also belongs the dark night of the Mount of Olives, to
which Jesus goes with his disciples; the solitude and abandonment of Jesus, who in
prayer goes forth to encounter the darkness of death; the betrayal of Judas, Jesus’
arrest and his denial by Peter; his indictment before the Sanhedrin and his being
handed over to the Gentiles, to Pilate. Let us try at this hour to understand more
deeply something of these events, for in them the mystery of our redemption takes
place.
Jesus goes forth into the night. Night signifies lack of communication,
a situation where people do not see one another. It is a symbol of incomprehension,
of the obscuring of truth. It is the place where evil, which has to hide before the
light, can grow. Jesus himself is light and truth, communication, purity and goodness.
He enters into the night. Night is ultimately a symbol of death, the definitive loss
of fellowship and life. Jesus enters into the night in order to overcome it and to
inaugurate the new Day of God in the history of humanity.
On the way, he sang
with his disciples Israel’s psalms of liberation and redemption, which evoked the
first Passover in Egypt, the night of liberation. Now he goes, as was his custom,
to pray in solitude and, as Son, to speak with the Father. But, unusually, he wants
to have close to him three disciples: Peter, James and John. These are the three
who had experienced his Transfiguration – when the light of God’s glory shone through
his human figure – and had seen him standing between the Law and the Prophets, between
Moses and Elijah. They had heard him speaking to both of them about his “exodus”
to Jerusalem. Jesus’ exodus to Jerusalem – how mysterious are these words! Israel’s
exodus from Egypt had been the event of escape and liberation for God’s People. What
would be the form taken by the exodus of Jesus, in whom the meaning of that historic
drama was to be definitively fulfilled? The disciples were now witnessing the first
stage of that exodus – the utter abasement which was nonetheless the essential step
of the going forth to the freedom and new life which was the goal of the exodus.
The disciples, whom Jesus wanted to have close to him as an element of human support
in that hour of extreme distress, quickly fell asleep. Yet they heard some fragments
of the words of Jesus’ prayer and they witnessed his way of acting. Both were deeply
impressed on their hearts and they transmitted them to Christians for all time. Jesus
called God “Abba”. The word means – as they add – “Father”. Yet it is not the usual
form of the word “father”, but rather a children’s word – an affectionate name which
one would not have dared to use in speaking to God. It is the language of the one
who is truly a “child”, the Son of the Father, the one who is conscious of being in
communion with God, in deepest union with him.
If we ask ourselves what is
most characteristic of the figure of Jesus in the Gospels, we have to say that it
is his relationship with God. He is constantly in communion with God. Being with
the Father is the core of his personality. Through Christ we know God truly. “No
one has ever seen God”, says Saint John. The one “who is close to the Father’s heart
… has made him known” (1:18). Now we know God as he truly is. He is Father, and
this in an absolute goodness to which we can entrust ourselves. The evangelist Mark,
who has preserved the memories of Saint Peter, relates that Jesus, after calling God
“Abba”, went on to say: “Everything is possible for you. You can do all things” (cf.
14:36). The one who is Goodness is at the same time Power; he is all-powerful. Power
is goodness and goodness is power. We can learn this trust from Jesus’ prayer on
the Mount of Olives.
Before reflecting on the content of Jesus’ petition,
we must still consider what the evangelists tell us about Jesus’ posture during his
prayer. Matthew and Mark tell us that he “threw himself on the ground” (Mt 26:39;
cf. Mk 14:35), thus assuming a posture of complete submission, as is preserved in
the Roman liturgy of Good Friday. Luke, on the other hand, tells us that Jesus prayed
on his knees. In the Acts of the Apostles, he speaks of the saints praying on their
knees: Stephen during his stoning, Peter at the raising of someone who had died, Paul
on his way to martyrdom. In this way Luke has sketched a brief history of prayer
on one’s knees in the early Church. Christians, in kneeling, enter into Jesus’ prayer
on the Mount of Olives. When menaced by the power of evil, as they kneel, they are
upright before the world, while as sons and daughters, they kneel before the Father.
Before God’s glory we Christians kneel and acknowledge his divinity; by that posture
we also express our confidence that he will prevail.
Jesus struggles with
the Father. He struggles with himself. And he struggles for us. He experiences
anguish before the power of death. First and foremost this is simply the dread natural
to every living creature in the face of death. In Jesus, however, something more
is at work. His gaze peers deeper, into the nights of evil. He sees the filthy flood
of all the lies and all the disgrace which he will encounter in that chalice from
which he must drink. His is the dread of one who is completely pure and holy as he
sees the entire flood of this world’s evil bursting upon him. He also sees me, and
he prays for me. This moment of Jesus’ mortal anguish is thus an essential part of
the process of redemption. Consequently, the Letter to the Hebrews describes the
struggle of Jesus on the Mount of Olives as a priestly event. In this prayer of Jesus,
pervaded by mortal anguish, the Lord performs the office of a priest: he takes upon
himself the sins of humanity, of us all, and he brings us before the Father.
Lastly,
we must also pay attention to the content of Jesus’ prayer on the Mount of Olives.
Jesus says: “Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet
not what I want, but what you want” (Mk 14:36). The natural will of the man Jesus
recoils in fear before the enormity of the matter. He asks to be spared. Yet as
the Son, he places this human will into the Father’s will: not I, but you. In this
way he transformed the stance of Adam, the primordial human sin, and thus heals humanity.
The stance of Adam was: not what you, O God, have desired; rather, I myself want to
be a god. This pride is the real essence of sin. We think we are free and truly
ourselves only if we follow our own will. God appears as the opposite of our freedom.
We need to be free of him – so we think – and only then will we be free. This is
the fundamental rebellion present throughout history and the fundamental lie which
perverts life. When human beings set themselves against God, they set themselves
against the truth of their own being and consequently do not become free, but alienated
from themselves. We are free only if we stand in the truth of our being, if we are
united to God. Then we become truly “like God” – not by resisting God, eliminating
him, or denying him. In his anguished prayer on the Mount of Olives, Jesus resolved
the false opposition between obedience and freedom, and opened the path to freedom.
Let us ask the Lord to draw us into this “yes” to God’s will, and in this way to make
us truly free. Amen. (fine)