Passion Libretto Part II: Gethsemane
This is day three of a six day free Holy Week offering. On this Holy Wednesday, in the Passion Libretto Part II: Gethsemane, Cynthia brings us to Jesus’ struggle and anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane. She says it is a day when the lights go out and all is winding down before things go completely dark. It is a spiritually generative yet excruciating birthing time when Jesus looked to the support of his friends to stand by and stay awake with him in the pain, yet they could not be present to him. From this place of desolation and disappointment, he still offers himself through self-sacrifice, self-abandonment, and kenotic love. He is somehow held in the midst of it all. We are invited to ponder this in our own lives and see if we can hold both sides of the paradox, the intense human pain, betrayal, desolation, and disappointment right alongside the comfort that it is divinely being held.
As a way of meditatively engaging this material, we invite you to light a candle, take a few conscious breaths, find your feet, and sink into the quiet that always exists deeply within the sanctuary of your heart. Then, as you are ready, begin to listen to Cynthia’s commentary from the ear of your open heart awareness. Today’s video is about 10 minutes.
Cynthia also offers a gesture that encapsulates the paradox she is talking about. Take some time in that gesture yourself before working with the text for Part II by way of the practice of Lectio Divina using this simple modified version:
Read the text or portion of the text, paying attention to what word or phrase stands out to you and allow yourself to repeat it briefly.
Read it a second time, slowly listening and paying attention to what is resonating within, what is troubling, what speaks directly to the heart even if we don’t understand or know why. Listen with your three centers noticing how the text lands in your body in sensation, gestures, postures as well as emotions and feelings that emerge. Allow your mind to ponder the thoughts, associations, and images that arise. Reflect on what comes up and whether there is a specific way it is speaking directly to you. Listen for what is relevant to your life right now.
Read it a third time, noticing whether a prayer or mantra emerges that can be offered on behalf of you, others, the world, or God.
Listen to the music of Part I of “The Passion,” allowing it to wash over you, resting collected as all that has taken place in the inner sanctuary of your heart continues to settle and assimilate, as you simply sit in the mystery allowing it to draw you deeper. Today’s music is about 12 minutes.
If this audio file does not work in your browser, click here to play the music.
Finally, write down some of what spoke to you from this reflective meditation. What does today’s material teach you about substituted love?
A blessed Holy Week,
Cynthia Bourgeault & Wisdom Waypoints Board
No one else to turn to but the very God, his very Abba, that has willed this very thing.
Jesus: Abba, if it be your will, let this cup pass from me.
Mt 26:39 Yet not my will but yours be done.
Ps 31:5 Into your hands I commend my spirit.
To hold a paradox; Mercy – something, eternal in a fleeting moment –
You Cynthia, provided here a profound deep metaphor; One pearl moment of my late life humbly and with gratitude now in my mind – a paradox to hold; something eternal in the fleeting moment at the same time in peace and chaos and … to see that humbly … afterwards.
This Passion-music; this deep and sweet libretto became a flowing but at the same time peaceful river which filled my heart, lifted and opened to awareness and joy – my whole body responding; The hand position central.
– You Cynthia have been given the mercy to give living words and living energy forward
With gratitude
The gentle and tender way that Cynthia made and held the gesture encourages me to have the courage to face what needs to die and to develop the will let it go. There is something so nurturing in the gesture together with the music. Thank you for this gift>
What came is the true darkness when we experience this death. All is gone. All is given over and is done with sorrow and suffering. The seed must be planted in the darkness of the soil and in the unknowing of what will transpire before the new life and new joy can emerge. WE will know that Love is greater than death.
What came is the true darkness when we experience this death. All is gone. All is given over and is done with sorrow and suffering. The seed must be planted in the darkness of the soil and in the unknowing of what will transpire before the new life and new joy can emerge. WE will know that Love is greater than death.
With gratitude for the beautiful symphony of Jesus reflection and total surrender to our fathers will.
A path to follow which is total surrender, acceptance and love, in spite of the anguish, sorrow, betrayal and pain he suffers through.
Into your hands; I commended my spirit.” What a power full action Jesus had made in His anguish condition. It shows me the fully acceptation and totally free willingness to the father’s will. Jesus was ready to die to yield a rich harvest (gather together us to the Father). It invite me to do for others in loving and severing them in small ways. In my life show the good seed in my community and die for love bearing and accepting the pain of others (the world) offer to me. Jesus was a fully human and fully Divine so I am. Jesus had shown me the path to walk willing and happy. Amen
I am grateful for the way Cynthia introduces her work and for the way she gives suggestions as to how the text and music might invite a deeper experience into a complex set of emotions and felt experiences which each of us have lived and or will live into. The metaphor of birth with the physical pain and sense of lack of control and yet accompanied by those who could witness and how profoundly supportive their presence can be even as witnesses was very helpful to me.
The text and music of Jesus’ disappointment as his friends’ exhaustion into sleep and his feeling abandoned and separated from them was also very helpful to me and brought out two relationships for me to pray into as well. I will also keep the beauty of the harvest being joyously returned by those whose tears watered the planting was very moving and the juxtaposition very helpful. Thank you!
Once again very powerful. This emphasis of love and acceptance plus surrender couldn’t come at a better time.
What a beautiful and powerful way to “experience” the sense that Jesus had of surrender, self-emptying, kenosis: “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” In my meditation, I sensed a fear of losing self and that somehow that would be shirking my responsibility as the person that I am. But I love Cynthia’s emphasis on the “regenerative” power of a seed dying…into new life.! The physical gesture of being held by a greater love is equally powerful.
With deep gratitude!
Thank you for sharing the gift of this work. It is extraordinary. I’ve listened to many Passion works over the years, and this one, so far, has been moving me like none other, in large part due to your libretto.