And he was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and kneeled down, and prayed,
All Commentaries on Luke 22:41 Go To Luke 22
Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
Very many people have difficulty with this passage. They attribute the Savior’s sorrow to a weakness implanted from the beginning, rather than received for a time. They also desire to distort the sense of a natural saying. I think that it should not be explained away. Nowhere else than here do I marvel more at his piety and majesty. It would have profited me less if he had not received my grief. He who had no reason to grieve for himself therefore grieved for me. Having set aside the delight in eternal Divinity, he is afflicted by the weariness of my weakness. He took my sadness in order to bestow on me his joy. He came down to our footprints, even to the hardship of death, in order to call us back to life in his own footprints. I confidently mention sadness, because I proclaim the cross. He did not undertake the appearance but the reality of the incarnation. He must thus also undertake the grief in order to overcome the sorrow and not exclude it. Those who have borne the numbness rather than the pain of wounds do not receive the praise of having strength. He was a man in suffering, and acquainted with the bearing of sickness.
