In a useful work on the doctrine of the Incarnation published last year, Dr. Arendzen, speaking of the Agony in the Garden, writes as follows: ‘It would be a mistake to regard “this chalice” as the torments and death on the Cross, and to think that He prayed to escape crucifixion and was refused. The Chalice was the agony in the Garden. He asked it to pass away and it passed away.’ Readers of this passage would be naturally led to suppose that an opinion so confidently expressed was in no way open to question. An attempt is here made to show that it is open to question, and that there exists another, and much better founded, interpretation of this prayer of Our Lord.

Saint Mark gives the prayer in these words: ‘Abba, Father, all things are possible to Thee. Remove this chalice from me. Yet not what I will, but what Thou wilt’ (xiv, 36).

The first point to be decided is the meaning of the words ‘this chalice.’ We say, then, that Our Lord means by this phrase His passion and death on the Cross. First of all, this meaning is clear from a comparison with St. John xviii, II: ‘Jesus therefore said to Peter: Put up, thy sword into the scabbard. The chalice which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?’ Here, certainly, ‘the chalice’ stands for His passion and death. The Agony in the Garden was already over, the soldiers were about to arrest Jesus and to lead Him away, and Peter draws his sword in an attempt to save Him by force from the death which, he fears, awaits Him.