Agony in the Garden:
The place to sweat blood

Second in a seven-part Lenten series.

		The Garden of Gethsemane  The Place of Transformation Fr. Ronald Rolheiser

In describing Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Luke says this: "In his anguish he prayed even more earnestly, and his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood."

Biblical scholars agree that the accounts of Jesus' death do not highlight so much his physical suffering as his emotional anguish and how his decision for love, to respond to a higher moral call, left him lonely, humiliated, misunderstood, prostrate in pain. It's Jesus, the lover, who sweats blood in Gethsemane.

What, more precisely, was his anguish? What is the lover's anguish?

Example of anguish

Some years ago, there was an American TV series entitled, Thirty Something.

One episode went this way: A group of men, all married, had gathered for a men-only evening at a downtown hotel. One of the men, several years married, found himself attracted to one of the hotel managers, an attractive woman with whom he had to deal all evening in terms of arranging food, music, and drink.

She was attracted to him, too, and though nothing other than practical talk passed between them during the evening, the romantic chemistry intensified. Gender magic was doing its old tricks.

As the evening was ending, both did what comes naturally; they lingered near each other, not knowing what to say, but sensing a special connection they were reluctant to break off. They covered this by making practical talk about cleaning up the room and settling the bills.

Finally, the moment came to part. The man stalled, thanking her yet again for her help and graciousness, and she, not wanting to lose the moment, said to him: "I very much enjoyed meeting you. Would you like to get together again sometime?"

The man, guiltily fingering his wedding ring and apologizing for not being more forthright earlier, did what few of us have the moral courage to do. Not without sweating a little blood, he said: "I'm sorry. I'm married. I should have made that clearer. I need to go home to my wife."

We must sweat blood

My dad, perhaps the most moral man I've ever known, used to say: "Unless you can sweat blood, you'll never keep a commitment, in marriage, in priesthood, or anywhere. That's what it takes!"

He was right. One of the great lessons of Gethsemane is precisely that. To keep any commitment, we have to sweat blood because, like Jesus in the garden, there comes a time when we have to enter into a great loneliness, the loneliness of moral integrity, the loneliness of fidelity, and the loneliness of responding to a higher will and a higher eros.

And that, as Jesus showed, requires a painful emotional asceticism, a certain romantic fasting, which can almost crush the spirit.

Emotional crucifixion

To make commitments and to remain faithful to each other requires being willing to experience what Jesus experienced in the garden, namely, emotional crucifixion.

Scripture says he gave his will over to his Father, but it was a very particular part of his will that was undergoing struggle and resistance in Gethsemane, namely, that part which stewards freedom, opportunity, romance, pleasure, and embrace. The lover in him had to let go of some things.

The same is true for each of us:

• Whenever you stop flirting with an attractive romantic possibility because you are already committed to someone or something else, when you go home because that's where fidelity calls you, you sweat blood in the garden and feel what Jesus felt in Gethsemane.

• Whenever you willingly, without resentment, give up some of your freedom, renounce dreams for a career, accept that you will never now be able to achieve some of the things you might have accomplished because children, family, church, and other needs have their conscriptive rope around you, whenever you accept the burden of duty, you sweat blood in the garden and feel what Jesus felt in Gethsemane.

• Whenever you willingly, without resentment, accept that some wonderful, legitimate opportunity for pleasure and enjoyment cannot be yours because something else is calling you to a deeper place, when you accept to settle for less because of the demand of higher things, you sweat blood in the garden and feel what Jesus felt in Gethsemane.

• Whenever you decide to do something purely for the sake of conscience, to do what is right even when everything inside of you screams against its unfairness, you sweat blood in the garden and feel what Jesus felt in Gethsemane.

• Whenever you experience an emotional crucifixion for the sake of truth and fidelity, you sweat blood in the garden - and you also create a place where God can enter into the world and transform it because this kind of blood is what takes tension out of the community.

Goethe, in his poem, "The Holy Longing," suggests that there comes a time in life when "a desire for higher love-making" sweeps you upward to a place where you become "insane for the light." That describes both Jesus in Gethsemane and the invitation he left us.

Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher, and award-winning author of several books on spirituality. He currently serves in Toronto and Rome as the general councilor for Canada for his religious order, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

Advance directives:
Differences between Living Will, Power of Attorney

	Guest commentary  Julie Grimstad

Advance directives are legal documents by which individuals express their wishes in case they are ever permanently or temporarily unable to make health care decisions for themselves. Wisconsin law covers two types: the Declaration to Physicians (Living Will) and the Power of Attorney for Health Care (PAHC).

The basic concept of advance directives is compatible with the Catholic Church's teaching that refusal of extremely burdensome, over-zealous treatment can be legitimate. However, the concept has evolved into a "right" to refuse all medical means of sustaining life in order to cause death.

Church teaching

The church defines euthanasia as "an act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering" and calls it a "murderous act, which must always be forbidden" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2277).

Both types of directive permit the withholding or withdrawal of "life-sustaining" treatment and care, including food and fluids, even when the omission will directly cause death. Thus, they can be used to license euthanasia.

Unfortunately, our society has very much lost sight of the difference between allowing a person to die when no treatment or care can sustain his/her life and murder by omission. The wrong kind of advance directive in the wrong hands can be a deadly combination.

Be prepared

	Information packet The Wisconsin Protective Medical Decisions Document (PMDD), a Health Care Power of Attorney, is available from the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, P.O Box 760, Steubenville, OH 43952; 740-282-3810. A $10 donation is requested for each packet.

Federal regulations require every hospital and health program that receives Medicare and Medicaid funds to inform patients about advance directives. Many hospitals give patients a Living Will or PAHC to sign at the time of admission, a time when most people are under stress. This is not an ideal circumstance for scrutinizing an important legal document, especially one with life or death consequences. It is wise to arrive with your own conscientiously prepared directive in hand.

When considering an advance directive, you need to understand the significant differences between the two types.

Living Will

A Living Will directs an attending physician to withhold or withdraw "life-sustaining procedures" for some future illness or injury. It is impossible to render sound decisions based on guesswork about the future.

Furthermore, your attending physician may be a stranger who interprets your directive in ways you did not intend. The law does not require the physician to consult family or friends about your wishes prior to stopping treatment. In fact, a patient's directive "must be followed." Therefore, a written refusal of treatment may tie the hands of a physician whose medical skills could restore you to health.

Power of Attorney

After detailing the dangerous flaws in Living Wills, a leading Catholic professor of moral theology, William E. May, advised:

It seems more prudent to adopt, as one's advance directive, the option of appointing, preferably in writing, an individual whom one can trust as one's designated surrogate to make health care decisions. One should choose as such a delegate only a person who will endeavor to make decisions in accord with Catholic moral teaching respecting fully ones' own love for the precious good of human life. ("Making Health Care Decisions for Others," Ethics & Medics, June 1997, Vol.22, No.6)

Professor May described a Power of Attorney, the most protective and flexible directive. It ensures that a person you have personally selected (your "health care agent") will protect your best interests if you are unable to do so. Your agent will base medical decisions on knowledge of your actual condition and treatment options, not guesswork.

It is important to discuss your preferences and principles with your agent on a continuing basis. Many people are not comfortable talking about aging, illness, and dying. However, as difficult as it may be to discuss such issues ahead of time, during a medical crisis it may be even more difficult or even impossible.

Julie Grimstad served as the director of the Center for the Rights of the Terminally Ill from 1985-2003. She is currently executive director of Life is Worth Living, a member of Pro-Life Wisconsin's speakers bureau, and a representative to the Diocesan Justice and Peace Commission of the Diocese of La Crosse, Wis.