And he was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and kneeled down, and prayed,
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Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
Since he then says, “Not my will but yours be done,” he referred his own will to man and his Father’s to the Godhead. The will of man is temporary, but the will of the Godhead is eternal. There is not one will of the Father and another of the Son. There is one will where there is one Godhead. Learn that you are subject to God, so that you may choose not what you yourself want but what you know will be pleasing to God.
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 rath...
The passion of grief, or affliction or sore distress as we may call it, cannot have reference to the divine nature of the Word, which is not able to suffer. That is impossible since it transcends all passion. We say that the incarnate Word also willed to submit himself to the measure of human nature by suffering what belongs to it. He is said to have hungered although he is life, the cause of life and the living bread. He was also weary from a long journey although he is the Lord of powers. It also is said that he was grieved and seemed to be capable of anguish. It would not have been fitting for him who submitted himself to emptiness and stood in the measure of human nature to have seemed unwilling to endure human things. The Word of God the Father, therefore, is altogether free from all passion. For the appointed time’s sake, he wisely submitted himself to the weaknesses of humankind in order that he might not seem to refuse that which the time required. He even obeyed human customs ...
God the Father had pity on earth’s inhabitants who were in misery, caught in the snares of sin, and liable to death and corruption. A tyrant’s hand made them bow and herds of devils enslaved them. He sent his Son from heaven to be a Savior and Deliverer. He was made like unto us in form. He knew he would suffer. The shame of his passion was not the fruit of his own will, but he still consented to undergo it that he might save the earth. God the Father wanted that, from his great kindness and love for humanity. He “so loved the world that he gave even his onlybegotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” As to the disgrace of his passion, Christ did not want to suffer…. He was obedient to the Father, even to death, and the death of the cross at that. Commentary on Luke, Homily
You have heard Christ say, “Father, if you will, remove this cup from me.” Was then his passion an involuntary act? Was the need for him to suffer or the violence of those who plotted against him stronger than his own will? We say no. His passion was a voluntary act, although in another respect it was severe, because it implied the rejection and destruction of the synagogue of the Jews….Since it was impossible for Christ not to endure the passion, he submitted to it, because God the Father so willed it with him. Commentary on Luke, Homily
“Not according to my will, but yours.” He said this word against Adam, who resisted the will of the Creator and followed the will of his enemy. Consequently Adam was delivered over into the mouth of his enemy. Our Lord resisted the will of the flesh to uphold the will of the Creator of flesh, because he knew that all happiness depends on the will of his Father. “Not my will but yours be done.” Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron
“If it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” He said this because of the lowliness with which he had clothed himself, not in pretence, but in reality. Since he had really become unimportant and had clothed himself in lowliness, it would have been impossible for his lowliness not to have experienced fear and not to have been upset. He took on flesh and clothed himself with weakness. He ate when hungry, became tired after working, and overcome by sleep when weary. It was necessary, when the time for his death arrived, that all these things that have to do with the flesh be fulfilled. The anguish of death in fact invaded him, to make clear his nature as a son of Adam, over whom “death reigns,” according to the word of the apostle. Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron
“If it is possible, let this chalice pass from me.” He knew that he was going to rise on the third day, but he also knew in advance the scandal of his disciples, the denial of Simon, the suicide of Judas, the destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of Israel. “If it is possible, let the chalice pass from me,” he said. He knew what he was saying to his Father and was well aware that this chalice could pass from him. He had come to drink it for everyone, in order to cancel, through this chalice, everyone’s debt, a debt that the prophets and martyrs could not pay with their death. Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron
“Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless let not what I will but your will prevail.” It is unlikely that he did not know whether it was possible or not, or that he would oppose the Father’s will. This is the language of him who came down and assumed our nature. However, this is not the language of human nature…. The passage does not mean that the Son has a special will of his own besides that of the Father but that he does not have a special will. The meaning would be, “Not to do mine own will, for there is none of mine apart from, but that which is common to me and you. Since we have one Godhead, so we have one will.” Oration, On the Son.
Consequently, while he had naturally the power of willing as God and as man, the human will followed after and was subordinated to his will, not being motivated by its own opinion but wanting what his divine will wanted. With the permission of the divine will, he suffered what was naturally proper to him. When he begged to be spared death, he did so naturally, with his divine will wanting and permitting. He was thus in agony and afraid. Then, when his divine will wanted his human will to choose death, it freely accepted the passion. He did not freely deliver himself over to death as God alone but also as man. By this, he also gave us the grace of courage in the face of death. He says before his saving passion, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” Clearly as man and not as God, he was to drink from the chalice. Consequently, as man, he wishes the cup to pass, and these words arose from a natural fear. “Not my will, but yours be done.” That is to say, “I am of another ...
