The Physical and Medical Aspects of Our Lord's Passion and Death - Part I: Introduction and Garden of Gethsemane

I can write a lot on the subject and events of our LORD Jesus Christ’s Passion and Death as recorded in Sacred Scripture, but for this series of articles, I am narrowing my focus to the often overlooked physical and medical aspects for the purpose of increasing understanding of what Jesus willingly chose to suffer as well as hopefully increase any Christian reader’s devotion to our LORD’s Passion and Death. I have long had a devotion to Jesus’ Passion and Death, and part of what inspired this article was the private revelation our LORD gave to St. Bridget of Sweden when He told her that He received 5,480 blows upon His Body during His Passion. The main sources of information I will be using are Sacred Scripture, certain aspects of pious tradition and private revelation (as it relates to the topic), and the scientific investigation on the Image of the Man seen in the miraculous Shroud of Turin. In terms of the narrative of events when it comes to each point of consideration, I am applying a proposed harmony of the Gospels based on Richard Bauckham’s scholarly proposal that the Gospel of John specifically fills in the gaps left within the narrative of the Gospel of Mark (and then afterwards applying the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke accordingly). And, yes, I am aware that Bauckham is an Anglican senior scholar at the University of Cambridge (i.e., he is not a Catholic), but to quote our LORD responding to St. John the Apostle’s remark about a non-Christian performing exorcisms in the Holy Name of Jesus, “Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in My Name who can at the same time speak ill of Me. For whoever is not against us is for us” (Mk 9:39-40). Since Bauckham is not against a growing Christian scholarly position that the canonical Gospels are 1st century eyewitness testimonies written before the Second Temple’s destruction in A.D. 70 (an academic resurgence that I find myself agreeing with as the popular post-A.D. 70 consensus in the mid-to-late 20th century never sat well with me), he can be of use for a Catholic wanting to better understand Sacred Scripture even if he is not in full communion with the Pope. I also wish to clarify that I am not a medical doctor nor consider myself an expert in the field, so please do not take my own words in this article as authority. Do what I did before writing this article and consult and research the actual experts in the field on what they had to say on this topic. You might then be wondering, “Why is he writing this article if he is not a medical expert?” The short answer, “Because this topic fascinates me, I want to write about it, and I have permission from Stephen and Beth Gesinski to do so after asking them if I could write about this for their site.” The scenes of our LORD’s Passion and Death that will be discussed are the Garden of Gethsemane, the Courtyard of the High Priest Caiaphas, the Scourging at the Pillar, the Crowning of Thorns, the Carrying of the Cross, the Crucifixion and Death of Jesus, and the Deposition from the Cross and Burial of Jesus in the Holy Sepulchre. So, without further ado, let us proceed with the topic of the article. 

Consistent pious tradition holds that the Passion of our LORD Jesus Christ began in the evening of Holy Thursday following the Last Supper Discourses when Jesus entered the Garden of Gethsemane with the Eleven (and possibly other disciples who were present in the Upper Room such as the enigmatic disciple and eyewitness of Jesus’ Public Ministry that the Church Fathers refer to as St. John the Presbyter, of whom the Gospel of John refers to as “The Beloved Disciple” to differentiate him from St. John the Apostle.) And, on the note on St. John the Presbyter being the most likely candidate for the unnamed Beloved Disciple, this does not mean I hold that the Gospel of John could not have been written by St. John the Apostle; rather, I am in agreement with the theological speculation of Pope Benedict XVI in holding that the fourth canonical Gospel account was actually written by both individuals either as a collaborative work, or that one operated as editor and redactor after the other one wrote the first draft. Moving back to the topic and judging on how long each prayer that Jesus made to God the Father lasted (as well as a common pious tradition that Jesus’ arrest occurred at midnight on Good Friday), Jesus appears to have remained in the Garden for three hours with His disciples. These three hours are also important for those wishing to speculate on how the lack of food and drink Jesus will have during the course of His Passion might have affected His physical Body as Sacred Scripture makes it clear that he did not eat or drink anything between the period of the Last Supper (assuming He did eat and drink during that meal) and His final moments on the Cross when He received libation from the hyssop sprig (for those curious, this would be a time-frame of twenty one hours – something that would seem staggering to our present-day, food and drink plenty culture in the 21st century United States.)

There is one detail regarding Jesus’ Agony in the Garden that will take our attention, and that detail is only found in the Gospel of Luke. In the first hour of Jesus’ prayer to God the Father (which in our modern clock would be from 9:00 p.m.-10:00 p.m.), St. Luke the Evangelist (who according to pious tradition and historical record was an accomplished medical physician before his conversion to Christianity ca. A.D. 49 when he heard the preaching of St. Paul the Apostle in Troas according to The Acts of the Apostles) records Jesus suffering a real-life, albeit rare, medical condition known as hematidrosis (see Lk 22:41-42). Hematidrosis can potentially occur in the human body when the affected individual undergoes feelings of extreme anxiety and/or stress (such as Jesus having the Foreknowledge that He is about to suffer extreme torture and death on Good Friday), and what occurs is that the tiny blood vessels in the skin break open, after which the blood inside them either gets squeezed out through the sweat glands or unusual little pockets of blood within the structure of the skin. The resulting “blood-sweat” (which is what the word “hematidrosis” happens to translate to in English) usually happens on or around the face, but it could also come from the mucus membranes inside the nose, mouth, or stomach. According to the witness of Sacred Scripture, in Jesus’ case, the hematidrosis appears to have only manifested on His Holy Face. That being said, after the “sweating of blood” occurs, the skin around the bloody area may temporarily swell, and, most important for this article’s topic, become extremely tender and fragile to the point where a simple, soft blow of air can register as acute physical pain on the affected area. This brings up an important question asked by Fr. Andrew Dalton (a world-famous scholar and presenter of the Shroud of Turin) to the faithful, “What was the first instance of physical pain felt by our LORD during His Passion?” Most people would assume the answer would be when Jesus is later struck in the face by the posturing Temple guard when interrogated by Annas, but that would be incorrect when we account what medical science has discovered hematidrosis doing to the human body that suffers from it. The correct answer is that Jesus suffered His first instance of physical pain during His Passion from none other than Judas Iscariot when the latter arrives in the Garden of Gethsemane to single out Jesus to the armed mob. Recall that Judas had made a prearranged signal (see Mt 26:48 and Mk 14:44) to the mob to identify Jesus from among His disciples present for the purpose of arresting our LORD and leading Him away securely. That prearranged signal was, of course, the infamous kiss that Judas gives to Jesus after saying to Jesus, “Hail, Rabbi” (quite literally, “Rejoice, teacher!”); that kiss given by Judas, thanks to the hematidrosis, would have transmitted to Jesus as acute physical pain on His Body. It was not just an emotional wound that Jesus suffered when Judas betrays Him with the infamous kiss. And, following an episode where Jesus rebukes both St. Peter and the armed mob, the Gospels tell us that Jesus is seized, bound, and led from the Garden of Gethsemane to Jerusalem (see Jn 18:12). And, again, for those keeping track with the timing of recorded events, the Arrest of Jesus took place between 12:00 a.m. and 1:00 a.m. on Good Friday. 

I have reached the end of the first part of this series. For the next blog post, I will discuss the details of the injuries our LORD suffered during His illegal trial before the Sanhedrin.