Gethsemane — “oil press” in Aramaic — is the garden on the Mount of Olives where Jesus goes with his disciples after the Last Supper. He knows what is coming. The prayer he prays here is the most intimate we have of him: prostrate on the ground, soul sorrowful to the point of death, asking the Father if the cup can pass. This is not a moment of doubt. It is the full weight of human will and divine calling pressing against each other in one person, at one moment, in an olive grove at midnight.

From the writers we read together

Brennan Manning

Franciscan priest and author of The Ragamuffin Gospel (1934-2013)

Manning often returned to Gethsemane as the model of honest prayer. He read Jesus's “let this cup pass” as permission for every believer to pray their honest desire before surrendering it. The ragamuffin gospel is, in part, the freedom to tell God what you actually want — not what you think you are supposed to want — and then to release it. Manning wrote that the Christians who pray most dishonestly are those who skip the “let this cup pass” part and jump straight to the “not my will” part, as if authenticity were a spiritual weakness to be bypassed.

The prayer of Gethsemane ends with five words that hold the whole Christian life together: “not as I will, but as you will.” Manning would say those five words are not the product of suppressing the previous request. They are the product of trust — specifically, the trust that the Father's will is better than what we can see from the olive garden floor. Jesus went to the cross not because he had no will of his own, but because he trusted his Father more than he trusted his own terror. That is not resignation. That is the fullest kind of faith.