Or, it might be said that Jesus said this to show how intimately his servants are related to him, inasmuch as they will be honored by the same one who honors the Son. For the honor the Son has by his nature, they will have by grace. So Augustine says: "An adopted son can receive no greater honor than to be where the only Son is." [21] "For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren" (Rom 8:29).
LECTURE 5
27 "Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify thy name." Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again." 29 The crowd standing by heard it and said that it had thundered. Others said, "An angel has spoken to him." 30 Jesus answered, "This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31 Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the ruler of this world be cast out; 32 and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." 33 He said this to show by what death he was to die. [22]
1649 Above, we saw the glory shown to Christ by various types of people; here the Evangelist considers the glory shown to Christ by God. First, he mentions that Christ asked for glory; secondly, the promise of glory is made (v 28b). Concerning the first he does two things. First, the interior state of Christ is given; secondly, he mentions the request made by Christ.
1650 Note, in regard to the first, that it seems incongruous for Christ to be saying, Now is my soul troubled , for he had urged his faithful to hate their own lives in this world; but with his own death near at hand, we hear the Lord himself saying, Now is my soul troubled . This leads Augustine to say: "O Lord, You command my soul to follow. But I see your own soul troubled. What support shall I seek, if the rock crumbles?" [23] Thus we must first examine this troubled state of Christ, and secondly, why he willed to undergo it.
1651 As to the first, we should note that, properly speaking, a thing is said to be troubled when it is greatly agitated. Hence when the sea is very agitated it is said to be troubled. And so whenever a thing oversteps the bounds of its repose and tranquility, it is said to be troubled. Now in the human soul there is a sentient area and a rational area. The sensitive area of the soul is troubled when it becomes strongly affected by certain movements. For example, when it is contracted by fear, raised up by hope, dilated by joy, or otherwise affected by one or other of the emotions. Sometimes this perturbation remains within the bounds of reason, and sometimes it exceeds the bounds or reason, namely, when the reason itself is troubled. And although this latter condition quite often occurs in us, it is not found in Christ, since he is the Wisdom of the Father. Indeed, it is not found in any wise person; thus the Stoic tenet that one who is wise is not troubled, that is, in his reason.
Accordingly, the meaning of Now is my soul troubled , is this: My soul is affected by the emotions of fear and sadness in its sentient part; but these emotions do not trouble my reason, and it does not abandon its own order. "He began to be greatly distressed and troubled" (Mk 14:33).
Such emotions, however, exist in us otherwise than in Christ. In us, they arise from necessity, insofar as we are moved and affected from without, as it were. But in Christ, they are not from necessity, but from the command of reason, since there was never any emotion in him except that which he himself aroused. For in Christ the lower powers were subject to his reason so perfectly that they could not act or undergo anything except what reason appointed for them. Thus as was said above [11:33]: "he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled himself"; "You have moved the earth," that is, human nature, "and troubled it" [Ps 59:4]. And so the soul of Christ was troubled in such a way that its perturbation was not opposed to reason, but according to the order of reason.
1652 In regard to the second point, note that Christ willed to be troubled for two reasons. First, to show us a doctrine of the faith, that is, the truth of his human nature. Accordingly, as his passion was drawing near, he did everything in a human way. Secondly, he wanted to be an example for us. For if he had remained unmoved and had felt no emotions in his soul, he would not have been a satisfactory example of how we should face death. And so he willed to be troubled in order that when we are troubled at the prospect of death, we will not refuse to endure it, we will not run away: "For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning" (Heb 4:15).
1653 The relationship of this with what came before is clear. He encouraged his disciples to suffer when he said: "He who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life." But some might say to him: "Lord, you can calmly discuss and philosophize about death because you are above human sorrows, and death does not trouble you." It was to counter this that he willed to be troubled. This disturbance in Christ was natural: for just as the soul naturally loves union with its body, so it naturally shrinks separation from it, especially since the reason of Christ allowed his soul and its inferior powers to act in their own proper way.
1654 Again, when he said, Now is my soul troubled , he refuted the error of Arius and Apollinaris. For they said that Christ did not have a soul, and in place of his soul they substituted the Word.
1655 Then our Lord makes his petition for glory, saying, And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour [understood here not as a question, but as a petition]. Here our Lord takes upon himself the emotions of one who is troubled. And acting as one troubled, he does four things in his petition. First, he poses a question, as one does when deliberating about what is to be done; secondly, he makes a request which arises from a certain inclination; thirdly, he rejects this inclination for a particular reason; and fourthly, he makes another request that arises from a different inclination.
1656 He poses this question as one does when in doubt, because it is natural to deliberate about what to do when one is perplexed. So the Philosopher says in his Rhetoric that fear makes a person take counsel. [24] Thus, after mentioning that he is troubled, Christ at once adds, And what shall I say? It is the same as saying: "What shall I do in my trouble." Something like this is met in Psalm 55 (v 5): "Fear and trembling came upon me," and then follows, "O that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest." For both the perplexed and the emotionally disturbed are weighed down and look for help to relieve themselves.
1657 He makes his petition, arising from a certain inclination, because when one is hesitant about what he should do, he ought to turn to God: "We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon thee" (2 Chron 20:12); "I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains from whence help will come to me" [Ps 120:1]. And so, turning to the Father, he says, Father save me , that is, from the sufferings which await me at the hour of my passion: "Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck" (Ps 69:1). According to Augustine, what our Lord says here - Now is my soul troubled and Father, save me - is the same as what he says in Matthew (26:38): "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death." [25]
1658 Note that this petition is not made as though it arose from the inclination of reason; rather, reason is speaking as an advocate of the natural inclination not to die. And so in this petition reason is pointing out the impulse of a natural inclination.
This explanation solves a question which is frequently raised. For we read: "In all things he was heard for his reverence" [Heb 5:7]; and yet in this case, Christ was not heard. The answer to this is that Christ was heard in those matters in which his petition came from reason itself and which he intended to be granted. But the petition he made here did not come from reason, nor was it intended to be granted, rather, it expressed a natural inclination. Thus Chrysostom reads it as a question, that is, as: And what shall I say? Shall I say, Father, save me from this hour? It is the same as saying: "No! I will not say this." [26]
1659 Yet Christ rejects this petition, which arose from an inclination of the natural appetite, when he says, No, for this purpose I have come to this hour . It is the same as saying: It is not right that I be freed from this time of suffering, because I came to suffer; and not as compelled by the necessity of fate or forced by the violence of men, but by willingly offering myself: "He was offered because it was his own will" [Is 53:7]; "No one takes it," my life, "from me, but I lay it down of my own accord" (10:18).
1660 Now his reason proposes its own petition when he says, Father, glorify thy name. Thy name can be understood in two ways. First, it can mean the Son himself. For a name ( nomen ) - which comes from the word for knowledge or being known ( notitia ) - is like a sign ( notamen ). Thus a name is what manifests a thing. Now the Son manifests the Father: "Father�I have manifested thy name" (17:6). We read of this name: "Behold, the name of the Lord comes from far" (Is 30:27). So the meaning in this: Father, glorify thy name , that is, your Son: "And now, Father, glorify thou me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with thee before the world was made" (17:5). Or, the name of the Lord indicates the knowledge which men have of the Father, then the meaning is, Father, glorify thy name , that is, do what is for the glory of your name. Yet it comes to the same thing, because when the Son is glorified the name of the Father is glorified. He says this because the Son was going to be glorified by his passion: "He became obedient," to the Father, "unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him" (Phil 2:8).
He is saying here in effect: By the desire of nature I ask to be saved, but my reason asks that your name be glorified, that is, that the Son suffer, because it was by the passion of Christ that men were to receive their knowledge of God and glorify him. For before the passion God was known only in Judea, and his name was great in Israel; but after the passion, God's name was glorified even among the Gentiles.
1661 Then when the Evangelist says, Then a voice came from heaven , the promise of glory is given. First, the voice promising glory is heard; secondly, the crowd expresses its opinion (v 29); lastly, the meaning of the voice is explained (v 30).
1662 With regard to the first, he says, Then a voice came from heaven . This is the voice of God the Father. It was the same voice that was heard when Christ was baptized, "This is my beloved Son" (Mt 3:17), and at his transfiguration (Mt 17:5). Although every voice of this kind was formed by the power of the entire Trinity, this was specifically formed to represent the person of the Father; thus it is referred to as the voice of the Father. In a similar manner the dove was formed by the entire Trinity to signify the person of the Holy Spirit. And again, the body of Christ was formed by the entire Trinity, but specifically assumed by the person of the Word because it had been formed to be united to him.
This voice, then, does two things. First, it reveals the past, when saying, I have glorified it , that is, I have begotten you as glorious from all eternity, because the Son is a certain glory and splendor of the Father: "For she [Wisdom] is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God" (Wis 7:26); "He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature" (Heb 1:3). Or, I have glorified it at your birth, when the angels sang: "Glory to God in the highest" (Lk 2:14) and in the miracles the Father performed through him.
Secondly, the voice foretells what is to come: and I will glorify it again , in the passion, in which Christ triumphed over the devil, and in the resurrection and the ascension, and in the conversion of all the world: "The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his Son Jesus" [Acts 3:13].
1663 Next we see the opinion of the crowd, which was wondering about the voice, The crowd standing by heard it and said . In this crowd, as in every other, some were dull and slow to understand, and others were more perceptive; yet all of them failed to identify the voice. Those who were slow and carnal only heard it as a sound; so they said that it had thundered . Still, they were not entirely mistaken, for the Lord's voice was thunder, both because it had an extraordinary meaning, and because it contained very great things: "How small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand?" (Job 26:14); "The voice of your thunder" [Ps 76:19].
Those who were keener discerned that the sound was a voice, pronouncing words and having a meaning; so they said someone was speaking. But because they thought that Christ was merely human they erred, attributing these words to an angel. So they said that, An angel has spoken to him . They were under the same error as the devil, who thought that Christ needed the help of the angels: thus he said: "He will give his angels charge of you" (Mt 4:6). But he did not need to be guarded and helped by angels; rather, he is the one who glorifies and guards the angels.