And he said, “Sit down here while I go over there to pray.” And he took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee with him. He began to feel sorrow and grief and fear and weariness. Then he said to them, “My soul is sad unto death. Stay here and keep watch with me” (Matt. 26:36-38, Mark 14:32-34).
The image of Christ in prayer, wracked by sorrow, grief, fear, and weariness, inspired Thomas More’s final work, which is often referred to as The Sadness of Christ. As More awaited his own trial and execution, he addressed “the story of that time when the apostles were sleeping as the Son of Man was being betrayed.” Astonishingly, More claimed that this scene in the gospel was “a mysterious image of future times.” More justified a figurative and even prophetic reading of Christ’s betrayal for a single reason. He believed that Christ was “betrayed into the hands of sinners” whenever “an imminent danger” threatened “the mystical body of Christ, the Church of Christ.” As a result, More intended to provide his readers with a universal, perennial message that could be applied to any age……continued, go to: crisismagazine.com/2018/church-scandal-through-eyes-thomas-more
