The Passion 8. The Agony (Mt 26:36-46; Mk 14:32-42; Lk 22:40-46)Mt 36 Then Jesus comes with them to an estatecalled Gethsemane, and He says to the disciples:“Stay here while I go over there to pray.”Mk 32 They come to an estate namedGethsemane, and He says to Hisdisciples: “Stay here while I pray.”Lk 40 WhenHe arrived atthe place,Leaving the Cenacle, located in the southwest of the city, Jesus and the apostles had three possible routes toreach the garden. He naturally avoided the one that crossed the Temple esplanade. The walk must have takenbarely half an hour. The Kidron, the “black brook”, is almost always dry.This “estate” (Crampon, Durand, Joüon), a term implying a large expanse of land, or “property”, the mostaccurate term according to Fr. Lagrange, which John, who knew the place, calls a “garden”, “orchard” (18:1),was located on the other side of the Kidron valley, on the western slopes of the Mount of Olives, northeast ofJerusalem, not far from the city walls. It was an enclosed estate, an olive grove where, as the name indicates,there was an oil press, used either for this garden alone or for the surrounding gardens, also planted with olivetrees, as suggested by the very name “Mount of Olives”. Various etymologies have been proposed forGethsemane; the most probable is gat (press) for oil (shemanim). A false etymology, suggested by Is 28:1.4 andby certain ancient Latin transcriptions (Gessamani, Gessemani), led St. Jerome to translate: vallis pinguissima,“very fertile valley” (PL 26,197). A dry-stone wall protected the trees.Archaeological discoveries, together with indications from ancient pilgrims, have made it possible to locate theplace of the agony1. One must distinguish the place where Jesus prayed from the place where He was arrested.The cave, wrongly called “of the agony” and now “cave of the betrayal”, is separated from the garden by thestepped path, still intact in the 9th century, which had 537 steps cut into the rock, allowing one to climb fromth...