Christ suffered Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane not only because of the horrendous suffering He was about to endure. He also sweated beads of blood from anguish over knowing that vast numbers of people would ignore His sacrifice and continue along the wide, easy path to destruction. 

Not All Will Be Saved


“This is the chalice of My Blood….which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Eucharistic Prayer during Mass – my emphasis.)

He didn’t say ‘poured out for all.’ His sacrifice would only benefit those who believe in Him.

It is not sufficient simply to say to ourselves, in private: “I believe in Christ.”

We have to live our lives as followers of Christ: this includes speaking up in His Name and being prepared for ridicule and persecution as a result.

It means standing up to public opinion – or rather, those who purport to represent public opinion, employing loud, bullying tactics to threaten into submission those who don’t agree with their secular agenda.

Sin Is Real                                                                                               
We who have stood by weakly and allowed the removal of God from the public arena and morals will have to answer to Him for our cowardice. Where were we when Christ needed us to fight the good fight?

And those in authority who are leading the population astray will pay the wages of sin, too, together with those pushing their amoral agenda down our throats.

“Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come (Luke 17:1).” (My emphasis.)

As Martin G. Collins writes:  “Anyone who leads others into sin bears great guilt. Only a deep-seated wickedness attempts to confuse and destroy another's potential.”

Lucy of Fatima said: “Taking into account the behavior of mankind, only a small part of the human race will be saved.”

And So Is Hell

"Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it (Matthew 7:13-14).”

Is our final aspiration to number among the “souls going down into the abyss as thick and fast as snowflakes falling in the winter mist”? Blessed Benedict Joseph Labre.

St. Padre Pio was asked what he thought about modern people who don’t believe in hell: “They’ll believe in hell when they get there,” he replied.

Unless we repent and change our ways by conforming to God's will, we’re going to discover the truth of that saint’s statement.

He has given us a choice, and if we’re humble enough to recognize God’s authority, we shall be taking the right road.

But those who are ‘too smart’ to believe in God will find out just how smart they really are after they leave this world. They'll meet their Creator, and in that brief moment realize that in Him they have found the Truth.  Then they will yearn to be with Him forever. But it will be too late.

Christ can save them while they're here on earth, but not afterwards. They’ll be cast out of His Presence for all eternity.

“If you wish to imitate the multitude, then you shall not be among the few who shall enter in by the narrow gate,” warns St. Augustine.

Is it really worth throwing away Jesus' sacrifice for us and risking our souls and those of our children?

Further Reading

SR. LUCIA of FATIMA GIVES WARNING: "MANY WILL BE LOST"

The Third Secret of Fatima

The Fathers and Saints on the Fewness of the Saved

Meditating on the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary this Friday, I had a clearer notion of Christ’s personal situation during His Passion.

Everything Christ did during His life, and especially during those awful last hours, point to His great love for us. 

But our human notion of real love is sketchy at best. Only through examining love in action through Jesus can we grasp the real essence of love.

Stopping the Pain

God in His three Persons is almighty and all powerful. At any time throughout His torture, Christ could have said, “Enough!” and halted the process.

He could also have revealed Himself as the transfigured Christ – with all wounds healed.  Can you imagine how terrified and in awe of Him the Jews and Romans would have been had He done that?

Instead he endured being whipped repeatedly with steel tips, spat upon, hit, jeered at and mocked. He was clothed in a purple cloak which was then ripped off His back after the blood from His scourging had dried on the material.

Thorns were pressed into His head and He was forced to carry His own heavy cross, when he had no energy left. When had he last eaten or drunk? At the Passover meal with the Apostles. That was hours ago.  

The cross dug into his shoulder, inflicting even more pain, well before he was nailed to it and hoisted, naked, for all to sneer at while he took three hours to die of suffocation.

And at any point during this excruciating ordeal, He could have said, “Stop!”

But He didn’t.

Doesn’t that give us pause for thought? Do any of us love even one person enough to go through such agony for them, let alone the whole of flawed humanity?

It takes unbelievable humility to act as if you have no power over your persecutors.

That’s real love.

Makes one think, doesn’t it? 

He Descended into Hell for Us

I've often wondered what the phrase in the Creed ‘He descended into Hell’ means.

Hell is separation from God. No one can enter communion with God in Heaven if he or she is not pure. We must be purged in Purgatory of our remaining impurities before we can enter Heaven.

Christ took on all the sins of the world – past, present and future – when He let Himself be crucified. He became impure. For the first, last and only time, He was separated from God.

And not because of anything He had done wrong. Completely pure, He became impure out of love for us. He’d been one with the Father from the beginning of time, and now, because He wanted to save us, He agreed to be separated from His Father.

No wonder he cried out, “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” The agony of being split from the Trinity must have been far worse than any physical pain. Even though He knew it was temporary and necessary to conquer death, it was going to be – well, Hell for Him.

And when we realize that He was fully aware that this horrible moment of separation was imminent, the Agony in the Garden takes on an added dimension, doesn’t it?

Yet Jesus did this out of love for us.

Another beautiful truth.        

Saved or Not?

He knew already in the Garden of Gethsemane just how many souls His sacrifice would save. He also knew the exact number of those who would spurn His sacrifice and descend into Hell.

Those latter souls will have refused to believe in God during their lifetime, only to discover His existence when they die. At the very moment when they believe in Him, they will be separated from Him.

Just when they desire Him above all things, it will be too late. They will never be with Him in Heaven. 

Imagine how the knowledge of these truths increased Christ’s agony! We can readily sympathize with His prayers to have the chalice removed from His lips. 

Yet He still went through His Passion out of love for us all. Even if only a few of us make it through that narrow door, Christ wanted to show us just how much He cared about every single human being, by dying a horrible death to give us all a chance to be saved.

Isn’t that another beautiful truth?  

So how are we going to show Him our appreciation of what He went through ‘for us men and for our salvation’?

All of us have to do jobs we find excruciatingly tedious: those daily chores which we feel are beneath us and wish someone else would do instead.

John Burger writes in his article ‘The Things That Made Mother Teresa Tick’ that one of the sayings of that “saint of the gutters” was: “For God nothing is small; for us they’re small.”

Watering the flowers every evening during the summer months is a job I find very small. It's tough to believe God doesn't agree with me!

Natural Winding Down

But with the right attitude, I can make this half hour of tedium turn into a positive ending to my day.

Father Richard Hauser, a Jesuit priest who wrote In His Spirit: a Guide to Today’s Spirituality writes that he needs to build ‘rhythms into my daily life to put me in touch with the Spirit.’

He makes time in his day ‘for being quiet and alone.’ One way he achieves this is through ‘simple chores that don’t require much intellectual activity.’

Flower watering definitely fits into this category, so I use the time spent holding the hose over them for winding down and becoming more relaxed. 

Showering God with Thanks

Once my mind is calm and I’ve stopped feeling resentful about having to be out here instead of being able to veg in front of the TV, I’m able to think about my day and see all the occasions when God was present.

For example: one afternoon someone got very angry with me. I apologized to that person even though I didn't think I'd done anything wrong.

But I did feel God rebuking me for my part in the events which led to that person being upset. It was humbling - and hard to deal with! I'd not acted in tune with the Spirit: my impatience had caused this situation.

So I drove to Starbucks to do some writing and take my mind off the painful event. 

While I sat there, one of the baristas came over and told me they were having to get rid of four chocolate croissants, and would I like them? She knows I love those things!

She then asked if she could she warm one up for me right now? The other three she put in a bag for later. She had no idea how much she had cheered me up! (A friend told her the next day. :) )

On the way home thankful tears dribbled down my cheeks. God needed me know I’d slipped up, but he wanted to console me by letting me know that He still loves me.

See what I mean? God is always present in our lives if we just look for Him.

Growing Spiritually

The gratitude God engenders in us leads naturally to a resolve not to let Him down in the future. Yet, sadly, we know we will. It's in our make-up.

A local church has posted this on their notice board for all the drivers passing by to see: “Men don’t fail, they just give up trying.”

Instead of being discouraged when we stumble, we should be glad God reminds us that we need Him at all times, and ask Him for the grace to pick ourselves up and try harder next time.

Keeping our eyes focused on Him will aid us in complying with His will throughout the day.

Praying Over Them Plants 

There are always people in our lives who need our prayers. Standing with the hose in my hand I think of all those who are unable to stand there with a hose in their hand.

Perhaps they are wheelchair bound in a nursing home like my mother, or find it too painful to stand up straight, or maybe they live in a tiny apartment and don’t have a beautiful garden of flowers to water.

So in addition to praying for the graces I need to be a better Christian, now is a good time to pray for the well-being of others in my life who aren’t as fortunate as me.

Fruitful Finale

Indulging in these mental activities while taking care of the garden makes productive use of my time. The minutes pass by quickly and often I reach that last plant before I’ve finished talking to God.

In those instance I continue my chat with Him while sitting on the lawn chair in front of the house. I converse with Him as I gaze over the rolling hills opposite, and admire the sun setting in glory over the horizon and listen to the gentle snorts of the horses in the field which add audible peace to the scene.

And I end up being glad I had to perform this mundane, “small” job.

When I recite the Rosary, my mind sometimes wanders off in totally unrelated directions. Sure enough, this Friday, while I was praying the first decade – the Agony in the Garden – my thoughts drifted to secular topics, which had nothing to do with Christ's  anguished beads of blood-sweat.

I looked for a new aspect of the event to get me back on track.

It occurred to me that Christ had just washed the feet of the man who - any moment now - would enter the garden and betray Him.

How did that feel?

How Did He Do It?!
Would we have washed Judas’ feet? Would we have performed such a humiliating task for the very person we already knew was going to hand us over to be scourged, hit, spat on, have thorns stuck into our head, and be forced to carry a heavy cross - so we could be attached to it with big nails driven through our hands and feet?

That’s what makes Jesus’ act of humility even more amazing. Not only was He performing a slave’s job for His followers. He already knew Judas was going to betray Him - “And you are clean, though not every one of you” (v. 10) - yet Jesus washed his feet, too! That demanded enormous love.

The article Jesus Washes His Disciples’ Feet reads: “For the love that is evident in the laying down of life at the crucifixion is also demonstrated in the laying down of life in humble service in the footwashing.”

Humble Re-enactment
On Maundy Thursday we witness the commemoration of that night as the priest washes the feet of twelve parishioners. And I always wonder why those particular twelve are chosen? What are the criteria for having your feet washed in church? (Thankfully I’ll never qualify - no one wants to see my sorry toes!)

One year our pastor called up twelve young men who’d expressed an interest in the priesthood. That was beautiful, and I appreciated the worthiness of those parishioners to be recognized in public.

But another priest recounted how he’d desperately not wanted to wash the feet of a particular church member, because the man was openly and loudly critical of him. For that very reason the priest’s spiritual director ordered him to include that man in the Maundy Thursday line-up.

It was very hard - humiliating and humbling – but the priest obeyed and bathed his enemy’s feet.

Now that's impressive!


Christ’s humility that night – washing all twelve disciples’ feet when He was aware that one of them would soon double-cross Him – is certainly something to recall when reciting the Agony in the Garden decade on the Rosary.