There is a connection between Jesus’ prayer on the Mount of Olives and on that of Tabor, in Galilee, stressed yesterday afternoon, March 7, 2017, Father Giulio Michelini to the participants in the Spiritual Exercises being held in the House of the Divine Master of Ariccia, as reported by Vatican Radio.
The Franciscan explained, before the Pope and the Roman Curia, that in both cases Jesus had a tried existential situation (in the first case, because Peter and the others had not understood the meaning of Jesus’ first announcement, who said that He would have to die at Jerusalem; in the second, because He had just announced that someone would hand Him over). Moreover, he explained that in both occasions Jesus called the disciples to Himself.
The difference consists in the fact that at Tabor the voice is heard of the Father, Who consoles the Son, while at Gethsemane it is the Son who turns to the Father saying “Your will to good be done,” noted Father Michelini.
In the same way Jesus exhorts His disciples, putting the Shema in practice (cf. D. Fortuna, Il Figlio dell’Ascolto), Israel’s prayer to love “God with one’s whole heart, one’s strength to giving one’s life,” highlighted the preacher.
Hence, the final questions that Father Michelini posed to the Pope and the Roman Curia: How does one place oneself before the anguish of one’s neighbor? Is God’s will seen as an obligation or as the “holy will to good”? And do I accept that the way in which this will is realized is to be conditioned, because God’s omnipotence is stopped before His creature’s freedom?
