Friday, March 10, 2006
Lenten Reading for Friday, First Week in Lent
Today's reading from the Little Black Book comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 22, verses 39-42:
Then going out, he went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. When he arrived at the place he said to them, "Pray that you may not undergo the test." After withdrawing about a stone's throw from them and kneeling, he prayed, saying, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still not my will but yours be done."
We are often told of Jesus' innate Godliness, of his being born with full knowledge of his purpose in life, and that he never in his life committed a single sin. In this passage, while Jesus prayed to our Father on the night he was betrayed and taken into custody by those who hated him and conspired against him, we are shown a true and deep reflection of the side of Jesus we are often meant to forget... His pure humanity. Jesus was a human, just as we are. Yes, he was the Master. Yes, he lived a live filled with the sublime wisdom of God-Realization. Yes, perhaps he even did know God's will from his birth. But here... here... on the Mount of Olives, we are shown a man. A man with fears, with doubts, and with a request from his father to avoid physical suffering... After all, hadn't God saved Isaac at the zero hour, and stayed Abraham's hand? Jesus' test is different than his forefather Abraham's, however. He passes this test with the words "not my will, but yours." Perhaps even more than his death on the cross, those words were his greatest achievement in life, for if we knew nothing else of Jesus' life but this phrase, and lived our lives by this phrase, we too could look upon the Zohar (splendor) that is the face of the One, True, and Ever Living God.
