the passion

Dear Lord,

Every time I reflect on your agony in the garden of Gethsemane, my heart share with your aches. It’s as seems I feel what you feel when you are preparing for your cup of death. In the movie The Passion of the Christ, the movie opens with you praying in the garden. The devil was so eager to tempt you and put you down. You never gave up even in that time when you have full knowledge of the greatest suffering you are about to experience. Adding to your misery is the fact that those friends you loved have not been with you nonphysically at that moment. As you said, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. More so, one of your bestfriends has betrayed you… with a kiss. How cold and alone you must have felt. This description probably is an understatement.

I admired you for your courage and strength. I admired you for having that full trust upon God the Father. I admired you most of all for the LOVE you have for us that have motivated you to accept suffering and death. I have told myself oftentimes that death is nothing to be feared of. I have believed in it. But I saw you SUFFERED and I guess if there is one thing I would let myself be afraid of is suffering! Why would anybody choose to suffer when they surely know they would still be killed in the end??? But you, at the garden, have known the kind of suffering you would experience in only hours ahead... not only the physical (although you have been in sooo much physical pain), but most of all the emotional, spiritual, and mental pains you would have to undergo … only to die in the end. However, I would not now let myself be afraid of suffering. I saw you suffered, I saw you die. Even though, my heart was crushed and my eyes swelled from crying, I saw how BEAUTIFUL you are when you suffered and died. I understand now that suffering is meaningful and dying is living.

You could have stood for yourself! I could have stood and fight for you if I was there at that time! I was asking myself why such people in your time had such cruelty and selfishness in their hearts. What have you done to deserve their hate? They were out of their minds! (Come to sadly think of it, I guess there are also that kind of people existing at present times.) They do not have power over you. Rather it’s the other way around. You have power over them! But you allowed it to happen because of the mission that God has told you to accomplish. My could-have standing up for you will interfere with what God the Father has willed. I admired you for having an accepting heart. Thank you for those examples because I needed that kind of heart sometimes when I am stubborn enough to insist on what I want and not on what God wills. Now I would rather go with what He wills even though how difficult or sad or boring may life be. I understand that like you, every difficult or sad or boring thing will be EASY, BRIGHT, and HAPPY when you LOVE. And you love God and humans above anything else. I Love YOU, Lord.