Unspoken in their actions were these words: “Given my life, my practical situation, that’s the best I can hope for. So why did they do it? Flat-out loneliness, inchoate depression, practical despair. They weren’t so naive nor rationalizing to believe for a minute that what they were doing was either life-giving or morally right. For example: A number of times, I have had friends who gave themselves over to periods of sexual promiscuity even though they knew better.
Most times when we give in to weakness or commit sin we do so not out of malice or bad intent, but out of despair. We fall asleep out of sorrow whenever we sell short what’s highest in us because of the bitterness of the moment.Īnd this is one of perennial temptations we have in life, to fall asleep out of sorrow. We fall asleep out of sorrow whenever we become so confused and overwhelmed by some kind of disappointment that we begin to act out of hostility rather than love, paranoia rather than trust, despair rather than hope. Jesus, himself, explains it three days later on the road to Emmaus when, in speaking of his suffering and death, he asks: “Wasn’t it necessary?” What the disciples were supposed to see and grasp in the Garden of Gethsemane was the intrinsic connection between suffering and transformation and the necessity, in that process, of being willing to carry tension, disappointment, and unfairness without giving into despair, bitterness, recrimination, and the urge to give back in kind. And, because of that sleep, they missed the lesson they were supposed to learn from watching Jesus in his prayer. They fell asleep because they were disconsolate, disappointed, confused, depressed. They fell asleep, Luke says, “out of sheer sorrow”. As Jesus and his disciples enter the Garden of Gethsemane, he tells them: “Stay awake, watch!” The implication is that they’re about to learn something, a lesson is to be taught.īut, as we know, they didn’t stay awake, they fell asleep, not because the hour was late and they were tired after a long day, nor even because of the wine they’d drunk at the supper.
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