By “this night” Jesus refers to much more than the
few hours of chronological darkness he and his disciples are about to live
through. In John’s Gospel, just after Judas leaves the seder room to go
and hand Jesus over to his enemies, the text comments with stark symbolism:
“And it was night” Jn 13:30b. The present night will fully expose the
depth of Jesus’ human weakness and vulnerability, and at the same time the
depth of his freedom and persevering love. Jesus uses his divine freedom
to embrace human weakness, to abide in it as in his own home, so as transform
it from within. It is the paradox of immortal love shining through dark
weakness that causes the disciples to stumble and fall. An all-powerful
God, they are convinced along with most of the human race, should not allow things
to reach such a critical point of danger, violence, and death. But Jesus,
for his part, is in love with the night that allows him to bare his heart to
his beloved, a rapturous mystery echoed by St John of the Cross:
Oh
night that was my guide!
Oh
darkness dearer
than the morning’s pride,
Oh
night that joined the lover
To
the beloved bride
Transfiguring them each
into the other.
Matthew has already established a tense juxtaposition between “the Kingdom of
my Father” and “the Mount of Olives” (26:29-30). Jesus leads his
followers from the room of the Last Supper to the Mount of Olives as a first
step on the definitive journey to the eternal Kingdom; after all, it is in the
Mount of Olives that Jesus will fully embrace the will of his Father against
all natural repulsion, in the certainty that following the Father’s will can
only lead to the Kingdom. But the disciples interpret this exodus to the
Mount of Olives differently, seeing in it only a deeper descent into defeat and
annihilation.
As always Jesus fortifies
his friends by bringing out into the open truths they would rather conceal even
from themselves. And so, he now proclaims to them the hard prophetic
truth: “You will all stumble and fall because of me this night.” Whereas the
disciples are cringing with fear, feeling a massive threat lurking in the night
air, Jesus himself, the target of this threat, worries not about himself
but rather about the state of their hearts and the crisis of their
wills. Even in the depths of personal distress Jesus’ thoughts are always
concerned with the welfare of others. It is as if Jesus considers the
conversion of his disciples’ souls a more daunting event than his own falling
into the hands of violent men, from whom he expects nothing better. The
only night that frightens the Master is the night in his followers’
hearts. It is an odd thing indeed that, when Christians bewail Jesus’
fate in his Passion, they habitually think first of all of the physical
sufferings inflicted on their dear Lord by the pagans, all the while forgetting
the long, mournful glance that Jesus steadily casts all through the Passion on
his disciples’ hearts.
Photograph by Brother Brian. Meditation by Father Simeon.