NOTES for Mat 26:36-46
Entering the garden of Gethsemane, Christ asks very little of the disciples: sympathy, some easing of His ultimate pre-death loneliness. He, who warned us of the need to be ready to bear the cross, does not force it on us at all, since He has already taken the main weight upon Himself. But precisely for this reason He has the right to ask us not even for help, since we have nothing with which to help Him, but for a small yet real compassion. After all, even a drop wears away a stone, and a little mouse can help pull out a huge turnip.
But the disciples dozed off from exhaustion and distress. This is the kind of small thing we understand so well and would easily forgive in ourselves. And as a result the Teacher was left in hopeless darkness. Three times the disciples fell asleep, and one of them was Peter, for whom the threefold drowsiness became a prelude to the threefold denial. Already in Gethsemane he had an opportunity to understand that he should not overestimate his strength at that time. But then he did not yet understand this.
And after all, the Lord does not often demand anything excessive from us; usually what He asks is within our strength. But we ourselves allow the circumstances that have fallen on us, which we ourselves call "excusable," to weaken us. And so we refuse to help Him resist the evil of the world.
Without question, He can manage without us. But will it be easy for us to stand before Him if we did not want to do even the smallest thing He asked of us?