“So, you could not keep watch with me for one hour? Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Matthew 26:40-41
In today’s Gospel, we find the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus goes to pray and asks the apostles to remain with him and keep watch. However, he returns to find them asleep, and not just once but three times. To us, this serves as a reminder of the many times that we too can “fall asleep” on the Lord. As we reflect on this passage, it’s interesting to note that we’re the ones typically asking the Lord to “remain” with us, asking him to sit with us and offer us his comfort and peace, but today, the tables are turned, and He’s the one asking us to “remain with him.” Yet, how difficult is it for us to “remain with him,” to remain faithful to his requests? Like the apostles, we can become weary in prayer and worship or even grow tired of his requests. It’s like Jesus says today: our spirit might be willing, but our flesh seeks something different or something more. The flesh is weak to the demands; it opens itself to the temptations that keep us away from the Lord or unable to remain awake or remain with him. The flesh is constantly testing us – tempting us to fall away from Jesus Christ as we encounter in the Gospel, the apostles falling asleep on Christ. We too can fall asleep, made weary by temptation.
Yet there’s another test that the apostles and even we will endure. Can we pass the test of being his disciples? Can we endure the pain and suffering on the Cross, the Passion of the Lord? Can we endure, as even Isaiah reminds us in the first reading, the “buffets and spitting,” the rejection and the discomfort which we way may undergo for being his disciple? It’s here when we realize that it’s more than just the temptation to sin but temptation to remain faithful to Christ in his totality, Passion and all. Jesus’ prayer today then for us, his disciples is that we may withstand the test, that we may be spared the test and not yield to the temptation of falling away from him, something which leads us to reflect these questions: When do we turn away from Christ or fail to remain in Christ? How easily do we become distracted by the ways of the flesh and fail to pray or worship because we’re too tired or place other activities before him or how we easily say to the Lord, on my time and not your time? My encouragement and prayer as we enter Holy Week is to take to “heart” these words which Jesus Christ directs to us this day and remain with him. Have a blessed Holy Week.
In Christ
Fr Robert