On Gethsemane

St. Justin Popovich 1894-1979

Even before Gethsemane, but especially in Gethsemane, the man-befriending Lord experienced all the torments of human nature which had rushed upon it as a result of sin. He suffered all the sufferings which human nature had suffered from Adam until His last descendant; He endured the pain of all human pains as though they were His own; He underwent all human misfortunes as though they were His own. At that moment He had before His all-seeing eyes all the millions of human souls, which as a result of sin are tormented in the embrace of death, pain, and vice… In Him, in the true God–Man, human nature wept and lamented, beholding all which she had done by falling into sin and death (Dogmatic Theology of the Orthodox Church. Belgrade, 1935. Vol. II, p. 377)