Thursday, April 9, 2020

As he sweated blood in Gethsemane (Fr. Ron Rolheiser)


  The real struggle for Jesus as he sweated blood in Gethsemane was not whether he would allow himself to die or invoke divine power and escape.  The question was only about how he was going to die:  in bitterness or love?  in hatred or forgiveness?

  That’s also our ultimate moral struggle, one which won’t just confront us at the moment of death but one which confronts us daily, hourly.  In every situation in our lives, small or large, where we are unfairly ignored, slighted, insulted, hated, or victimized in any way, we face a choice of how to respond:  bitterness or understanding?  hatred or love?  vengeance or forgiveness?

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser, Facebook, April 8, 2019

Image source:  Jesus Mafa, Christ on Gethsemane, Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN, http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48391

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