In the garden of Gethsemane, Our Lord foresaw the Church’s trials and His scattered flock. Yet, despite the suffering this inflicted upon His most gentle Heart, He pressed forward and accepted the chalice His Father had given Him to drink.
Christ’s Vision of the Church’s Trials
Jesus answered them, “Take heed that no one leads you astray. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray. … Then they will deliver you up to tribulation, and put you to death; and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. And then many will fall away, and betray one another, and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise, and lead many astray. And because wickedness is multiplied, most men’s love will grow cold.”
Matthew 24:4–5, 9–12
Long before He suffered His passion, Jesus knew He would one day be “mocked and scourged and crucified” (Matthew 20:19). He knew as well that the Church He established would follow in the footsteps of His suffering (Matthew 5:10–12; 10:16–28; 16:24; 24:4–11).
But now, because of Jesus’ awareness of His Church’s future trials, He faced more haunting questions: “If I suffer these things, what good will it do? Will this fallen race turn its back on My gift? Is it worth the price?”
“He Himself knew what was in man” (John 2:25). Our Lord had seen the pride and the envy; the hatred and the rage; and the lust for wealth, power, pleasure, and fame. He could offer deliverance from all this to those who would come to Him. But how many would come? And how many would stay?
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A succession of new and terrifying visions were presented before Jesus’ eyes, and that feeling of doubt and anxiety which someone on the point of making some great sacrifice always experiences, arose in the soul of Our Lord, as He asked himself the tremendous question: “And what good will result from this sacrifice?” Now He beheld all the future sufferings, combats, and wounds of His heavenly Spouse, the Church. In a word, He beheld the ingratitude of men.
The soul of Jesus beheld all the future sufferings of His apostles, disciples, and friends. After this He saw the primitive Church, numbering but few souls in her fold at first, and then in proportion as her numbers increased, disturbed by heresies and schisms breaking out among her children, who repeated the sin of Adam by pride and disobedience. He saw the tepidity, malice, and corruption of an infinite number of Christians, the lies and deceptions of proud teachers, all the sacrileges of wicked priests, the fatal consequences of each sin, and “desolating sacrilege” in the kingdom of God (Matthew 24:15), in the sanctuary of those ungrateful human beings whom He was about to redeem with His blood at the cost of unspeakable sufferings.
Christ’s Vision of a Scattered Flock
My people have been lost sheep; their shepherds have led them astray, turning them away on the mountains; from mountain to hill they have gone, they have forgotten their fold. All who found them have devoured them, and their enemies have said, “We are not guilty, for they have sinned against the Lord, their true habitation.”
Jeremiah 50:6–7
Attacking wolves can tear a shepherd’s flesh. But wayward sheep can cause an injury more bitter still: They will break a shepherd’s heart.
Our Lord, “the Good Shepherd,” knew He must lay down His life for the sheep (John 10:11). By His death, He would gather them into “one flock” (v. 17). But in their willfulness they could still wander, scatter, and lose their way in the search for greener pastures, where predators would pick them off.
Anne Catherine told how Jesus’ terrifying visions continued as He watched His beloved flock disperse in the centuries to come—following multitudes of “hirelings” who were themselves misguided, chasing after the wind. And His heart was pierced as He saw the wilderness devour so many of those for whom He would give His life.
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Jesus beheld all the apostates, heretical leaders, and pretended reformers, who deceive men by an appearance of holiness. They vied with each other in tearing the seamless robe of His Church. Many avoided His compassionate embrace and hurried on to the abyss where they were finally swallowed up.
In His agony Jesus saw countless numbers of other men who did not dare openly to deny Him, but who passed on in disgust at the sight of the wounds of His Church, just as the Levite had passed by the poor man who had fallen among robbers in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Like cowardly and faithless children, who desert their mother in the middle of the night at the sight of the thieves and robbers to whom their negligence or their malice has opened the door, they fled from His wounded spouse, the Church.
He beheld all these men, sometimes separated from the True Vine, and taking their rest amid the wild fruit trees, sometimes like lost sheep, left to the mercy of the wolves, led by base hirelings into bad pastures, and refusing to enter the fold of the Good Shepherd who gave His life for His sheep. They were wandering homeless in the desert in the midst of the sand blown about by the wind, and were obstinately determined not to see His city placed upon a hill, which could not be hidden, the house of His spouse, His Church built upon a rock, with which He had promised to remain to the end of ages. They built upon the sand wretched tenements, which they were continually pulling down and rebuilding, but in which there was neither altar nor sacrifice.
They had weathercocks on their roofs, and their doctrines changed with the wind. Consequently, they were forever in opposition one with the other. They never could come to a mutual understanding, and were forever unsettled, often destroying their own dwellings and hurling the fragments against the Cornerstone of the Church, which always remained unshaken.
Jesus beheld them all, He wept over them, and was pleased to suffer for all those who do not see Him and who will not carry their crosses after Him in His city built upon a hill—His Church founded upon a rock, to which He has given Himself in the Holy Eucharist, and against which the gates of Hell will never prevail.
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This article is taken from a chapter in The Passion: Reflections on the Suffering and Death of Jesus Christ by Paul Thigpen which is available from TAN Books.
