FATHER! SAVE ME FROM MY SUFFERINGS

     As we enter the final part of Lent, known as, “Passiontide”, in today’s passage from St. John’s Gospel we hear Our Lord’s prayer to His Father to be “saved from this hour”, that is, to be spared His forthcoming sufferings. Yet He also acknowledges that it is “for this hour that I have come into the world”.

     Those who witnessed this prayer also heard what sounded like thunder. St. John tells us that it was God speaking to His Son to strengthen Him, by assuring Him that all that He would undergo would be for the glory of God’s name. This is very similar to Our Lord’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the ministration to Our Lord by the Angel of the Agony to strengthen Him (Lk. 22:43).

     It is important to understand from this event, as far as one can humanly grasp it, that the Father’s request for His Son’s acceptance of a terrible death, and the Son’s willing obedience in spite of the horror of it all, points to God’s infinite love of for us. In this moment Our Lord shows His human anguish in the face of all that is to befall Him. But the Father also shows His Son’s godhead in pointing to the glory that His Son will give by His willing self-sacrifice for sinful mankind.     ~ FR. PAUL DOBSON