It is finished

I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.

Mosiah 2:21

The Three Prayers of Gethsemane

S. Michael Wilcox

There are three recorded prayers from Gethsemane, or at least three versions of the same prayer.  For they are all poignant and beautiful, yet they teach different truths …

but all of them tell us something about that moment in the Savior’s life.

 And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

Matthew 26:36

 And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.

Mark 14:36

And he was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast, and kneeled down, and prayed,

Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.

Luke 22:41-42

So Jesus began to drain the bitter cup. He drinks it all through Gethsemane. It is easy to visualize the shaking that accompanied drinking that extremely bitter cup.  He drank it through his trial before the Sanhedrin as well as the trials before Herod and Pilate.  He drank it through Calvary and the Crucifixion and finally arrived at that moment on the cross near the end when he made one request for himself.  Two Simple words! They are the simplest request a man in pain can make. “I thirst”.  Soldiers mocked him, coming to him, and offering him vinegar. Vinegar is Bitter. David, in the Psalms, looking forward with prophetic vision to that some moment, voiced the Savior’s own feelings at that moment when the vinegar was given.

 Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none…..and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

When Jesus tastes the proffered vinegar, he knows that he has drunk the bitter cup to the very last drop. He then says, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” It is finished, and he dies.

"These simple words-"He is not here, but is risen"-have become the most profound in all literature. They are the declaration of the empty tomb. They are the fulfillment of all He had spoken concerning rising again. They are the triumphant response to the query facing every man, woman, and child who was ever born to earth."

Gordon B. Hinckley