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The Prayer of the Agony

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

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He began to be sorrowful: he began to be afraid. We live today in a world so haunted by fear that this story of Christ's agony must be very close to us. Anxiety lies heavy on the heart of men; and on the lips of philosophers the very word has become a commonplace. But it is not only fear that we share with this figure in the garden. The most fearful thing about the world's fear is its hopelessness, its sense of futility, a futility reflected again by those philosophers for whom anxiety is an anguish from which there is no issue. Here, in the garden, he began to be afraid: and it was indeed a dread of the torments to come; it was indeed the burden of loneliness; it was the terrible sense of defilement, the even physical horror of the black waters of evil overwhelming him; but added to all this there was the knowledge that it would all to some extent be in vain, to some extent be futile.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1949 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 The text of a broadcast on the Third Programme (B.B.C.), Tuesday in Holy Week, 12 April 1949.