According to all four Gospels, immediately after the Last Supper, Jesus took a walk to pray. Each Gospel offers a slightly different account regarding narrative details. The gospels of Matthew and Mark identify this place of prayer as Gethsemane. Jesus was accompanied by three Apostles: Peter, John and James, whom he asked to stay awake and pray. He moved "a stone's throw away" from them, where he felt overwhelming sadness and anguish, and said "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Nevertheless, let it be as You, not I, would have it." Then, a little while later, he said, "If this cup cannot pass by, but I must drink it, Your will be done!". He said this prayer thrice, checking on the three apostles between each prayer and finding them asleep. He commented: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak". An angel came from heaven to strengthen him. During his agony as he prayed, "His sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling down upon the ground". At the conclusion of the narrative, Jesus accepts that the hour has come for him to be betrayed.
Tradition
In Roman Catholic tradition, the Agony in the Garden is the first Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary and the of the Scriptural Way of The Cross. Catholic tradition includes specific prayers and devotions as acts of reparation for the sufferings of Jesus during His Agony and Passion. These Acts of Reparation to Jesus Christ do not involve a petition for a living or dead beneficiary, but aim to "repair the sins" against Jesus. Some such prayers are provided in the RaccoltaCatholic prayer book which also includes prayers as Acts of Reparation to the Virgin Mary. In his encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor on reparations, Pope Pius XI called Acts of Reparation to Jesus Christ a duty for Catholics and referred to them as "some sort of compensation to be rendered for the injury" with respect to the sufferings of Jesus. Catholic tradition holds that Jesus' sweating of blood was literal and not figurative.
In the Catholic tradition, is the basis of the Holy Hour devotion for Eucharistic adoration. In the Gospel of Matthew: "Then He said to them, 'My soul is very sorrowful even to death; remain here, and watch with Me.'" Coming to the disciples, He found them sleeping and, in Matthew 26:40, asked Peter: The tradition of the Holy Hour devotion dates back to 1673 when Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque stated that she had a vision of Jesus in which she was instructed to spend an hour every Thursday night to meditate on the suffering of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Artistic depictions
There are a number of different depictions in art of the Agony in the Garden, including:
Medical conjectures
A medical interpretative hypothesis of hematidrosis has been advanced in the scientific literature, according to which the great mental anguish that Jesus suffered to the point that His sweat became blood is described only by Luke the Evangelist because he was a physician.
