In reflecting on today's Gospel reading, let us focus on Peter's denial. Let us try to experience this event with Peter. Let us not hurry to say that we never even thought of denying Christ, because we love Him more than anything in the world. By speaking this way, we show that we do not know what love is. If someone wants to understand the words from the First Epistle of John (1 John 4:8), that God is love, he should first of all think about what Peter felt and experienced in the moments of denial and during the three days that followed. Why is this so?

What is most frightening to us when we love? The most frightening thing is that the beloved person will die. And when he dies, literally as soon as his life goes out, we begin to understand how much we did not do for him that we could have done, but now it is no longer possible to do it, because he is no more. We cannot come to him, embrace him, and beg forgiveness for all the bad that happened and for all the good that did not happen.

What did Peter experience, not yet knowing about the Resurrection? A fierce pain of repentance and the impossibility of asking forgiveness. And if we think about it, his denial is not much better than Judas' betrayal. But Judas cannot endure the feeling of guilt, while Peter endures it. What is the difference? Perhaps by understanding the difference, we will understand what love is.

The betrayal has taken place, and a raid has been organized against Jesus as against a robber. The attempt of one of the disciples to defend Christ according to the rules of this world is stopped by Him Himself.

Those who arrested Him probably did not themselves believe that Christ would begin actively resisting. But their precautions reveal another fear: fear of the unknown, fear of the other life brought by this incomprehensible preacher, and finally fear of looking into oneself and recognizing one's own wrong. It is fear that makes people attribute the most monstrous absurdities to their victim, just to drown out the voice of conscience.

Today's passage is devoted to something we usually do not find joyful to think about at all and by no means pleasant to remember: human weakness. For Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane revealed not only the suffering of Jesus' own soul, but also the weakness of His disciples, who proved completely unready to support Him (vv. 33-41). It is noteworthy that in the end they all ran away (vv. 50-52), although not long before they had all expressed their readiness to die with their Teacher (vv. 27-31).

Of course, the easiest thing would be to explain everything by hotheadedness and, perhaps, youthful maximalism, which often lets its possessor down at the most unsuitable moment. But among the apostles there were people of different ages and temperaments, and many of them were far from being boys. Evidently, the apostles' expressed resolve to follow Jesus, if necessary, to death, was not the fruit of emotion alone. And yet at the moment when the Teacher so needed support, the disciples, even the closest ones, could not hold out and fell asleep.

But what was it that they could not hold out against? The strain of waiting? A sleepless night? Probably that too. But there was something else: here, in the Garden of Gethsemane, for the first time they saw their Teacher like this: suffering, exhausted by anguish, imploring the Father for mercy, asking that the cup prepared for Him somehow, by some incredible miracle, might still pass Him by. They had always and everywhere seen the Teacher strong, and suddenly, completely unexpectedly, they saw Him weak. They were used to always hoping in Him, relying on Him in all the trials that had until then fallen to their lot, and now suddenly the Teacher Himself asks them for help and seeks support from them.

The apostles were evidently not ready for this. They were, of course, ready to die beside Him, but they probably thought it would be a heroic death in the struggle for the triumph of that Kingdom about which the Teacher had spoken so much and so often, not a meaningless death in a war that had not even begun. It is no surprise that the only reaction of one of the disciples to the appearance of those who came to arrest Jesus was a sword stroke (v. 47): if one is to die, then at least in battle. And when it turned out that there would be no battle, they all immediately ran away, no longer seeing any point in remaining there, in the place of what then seemed to the apostles a complete and final catastrophe.

And now, when the apostles run away, it also becomes clear why none of the three could endure the Teacher's prayer without falling asleep: they evidently understood, no worse than Jesus Himself, that what awaited them was nothing like what they had expected. This was impossible to bear, and, as often happens in such moments, their consciousness simply switched off, unable to withstand the strain. Perhaps the apostles even fled quite unexpectedly to themselves, as sometimes happens to a person in a state of shock, when he simply does not know how to react to a completely unexpected situation that has developed.

Here we have before us a very instructive example that reveals the main cause of every human weakness: spiritual unreadiness to accept a situation as it is. As a rule, we are ready for what we expect and completely unready for surprises. Yet readiness for surprises presupposes spiritual readiness, not merely psychological readiness. We prepare ourselves in advance for what we expect, developing possible models of behavior and preparing answers to possible questions. Sometimes this works, but it is important to remember that our psyche is just as much a part of nature as our body is. And our spiritual "I," the true center of our personality, what the Bible calls the heart, manifests itself when all home preparations, all plans, and all expectations prove untenable and unnecessary.

And here begins what is most important for us: only when a decision is made by our spiritual "I" can it be right in any situation, even the most unexpected. Then situations of "accidental" betrayal and thoughtless, "automatic" treachery become impossible.