24
Jesus brings the human will back to the unreserved “yes” to God; in him the natural will
is fully integrated in the orientation that the Divine Person gives it. Jesus lives his life in
accordance with the centre of his Person: his being the Son of God. His human will is
drawn into the I of the Son who abandons himself totally to the Father. Thus, Jesus tells
us that it is only by conforming our own will to the divine one that human beings attain
their true height, that they become “divine”; only by coming out of ourselves, only in the
“yes” to God, is Adam’s desire—and the desire of us all—to be completely free. It is
what Jesus brings about at Gethsemane: in transferring the human will into the divine will
the true man is born and we are redeemed. 88
Once more in a garden, freedom was “put to the test,” as the Catechism states, a freedom abused
in the Genesis account of man’s original “no” to God’s gift of love and life. 89 Original holiness
was lost when man refused to recognize his creaturehood and surrender to God’s loving
providence. Original holiness was restored when Jesus, as an inseparable unity of the human and
the divine, fulfilled his Father’s command to tend and protect, first spoken in another garden, a
command demanding service as the true expression of manhood. 90
The words of the Holy Father echo that of Lucas’ description of the garden as “the
intersection between heaven and earth.” 91 In the garden, “the ‘earth’ became ‘heaven’; the ‘earth’
of [Jesus’] human will, shaken by fear and anguish, was taken up by his divine will in such a
way that God’s will was done on earth.” 92 It was in the Garden of Olives that the fruit of Jesus’
sacrifice was generated, to ripen fully into the birth of the Holy Church on the Tree of Life of the
Cross. St. Paul refers to this event in Ephesians 5, in which he expounds on the mystery of the
spousal relationship between Christ and his Bride the Church, for whom he “gave himself up for
her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that
he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing,
88
Benedict XVI, “General Audience,” February 1, 2012, para. 16.
CCC, 396.
90
MD, sec. 5.
91
Lucas, “The Enclosed Garden.”
92
Benedict XVI, “General Audience,” February 1, 2012, para. 19.
89