The Garden of Gethsemane Undoes the Garden of Eden

On Holy Thursday night, the Church reflects on Jesus’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane and His imprisonment before His trial. There is an interesting and meaningful parallel between the first garden where Adam and Eve were placed, the Garden of Eden, and this garden where Jesus endures His painful agony while awaiting the start of His Passion. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus undoes the disobedience of Adam in the Garden of Eden by submitting to the will of His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane. He also resists the temptations and taunts of the devil, to undo Adam and Eve’s yielding to him. Jesus chose a garden in order to go back to the beginning and undo the sin of disobedience stemming from pride that started man’s rebellion. Before He gave His life for us on the Cross to save us from all of our sins, He first undid the Original Sin as the new Adam.

While Adam and Eve gave in to the serpent’s temptation that “you will not die… you will be like gods” (Genesis 3:4-5) and so disobeyed God’s command to not eat from the tree of good and evil, Jesus humbled Himself before His Father and although He asked for the cup to pass away, He followed His request with “Not My will, but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42). He did not seek to be equal to His Father in that moment but wanted His will to be done, whereas Adam and Eve wanted their own will to be done and to become like God. And as depicted in the movie The Passion of the Christ, the serpent showed up to tempt Jesus just as he’d tempted Adam and Eve, asking Jesus if He really thought that one man could atone for the sins of the world. But unlike Adam and Eve, Jesus leaned on His Father in that moment and overcame the temptations. At the end of the scene in the movie, He is seen crushing the serpent and defeating him instead of giving in to him. In this way, Jesus begins the work of redeeming man which will culminate in His Passion and Death on the Cross.

As we reflect on the Agony in the Garden and spend time in the garden with Jesus, let’s ask Him to give us the grace to pray that the Father’s will be done in our lives instead of our own.