In my hospital bed I was homesick. Here it was August, but I found myself thinking of Holy Week. Lonely week. The most painful part of the story. Jesus, at the end of his earthly mission, facing failure, abandonment, death.

What kept him going? What keeps us going when we’re in the middle of the worst of it? the knowledge that we are loved by our Creator. Everybody else left Jesus. The disciples, those he had counted on to be with him to the end, all left him in the Garden. No one understood who he was, what he was about, what he had come for. How many times in our lives have we faced that utter and absolute abandonment? He knew that his mission had been high, and it was in ruins about his feet.

He stood in front of Pontius Pilate and he held to his mission and his position because of love, God’s love, which did not fail, not even when he questioned it on the cross.

What has happened during the centuries to that God of sustaining, enduring, total love? How can we survive without it?

I cannot.

–  The Rock That Is Higher: Story as Truth - Madeleine L’Engle

Gethsemane

Gethsemane is the place to which Jesus led the desciples, following the Last Supper. The name Gethsemane most likely comes from the Hebrew "gat shemanim," which means "oil press." The name could also possibly come from the Hebrew "ge shemanim," which means "valley of the drunkards (Isaiah 28:1), which refers to a wine press.

The traditional site of the Garden of Gethsemane is the western slope of the Mount of Olives. Today, as in the time of Jesus, olive trees cover much of the slope. On the side of the hill is a large cave that may have been the site of an press among the olive trees.

From the fourth century on, various spots in the area have been identified as the location of Gethsemane, and especially as the place where Jesus struggled in prayer. Remains of earlier churches, dating back to early 300 A.D. and commemorating these events, have been covered over by more recent structures. Most recently the the Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene and the modern Franciscan Church of Gethsemane have occupied those spots. .

Sources: The Dictionary of Bible and Religion, William Gentz | The Bible Almanac, White | Easter a Pictorial Pilgrimage - Pierre Benoit |

Easter Quotations

If Easter means anything to modern man it means that eternal truth is eternal. You may nail it to the tree, wrap it up in grave clothes, and seal it in a tomb; but "truth crushed to earth, shall rise again." Truth does not perish; it cannot be destroyed. It may be distorted; it has been silenced temporarily; it has been compelled to carry its cross to Calvary’s brow or to drink the cup of poisoned hemlock in a Grecian jail, but with an inevitable certainty after every Black Friday dawns truth’s Easter Morn!

       —Donald Harvey Tippet

The cross is "I" crossed out.  

— Annonymous