Tractates on the Gospel of John

³ In a word, let the man who would follow learn the road by which he must travel. Perhaps an hour of terrible trial has come, and the choice is set before you either to do iniquity or endure suffering; the weak soul is troubled, on whose behalf the invincible soul [of Jesus] was voluntarily troubled; set then the will of God before your own. For notice what is immediately subjoined by your Creator and your Master, by Him who made you, and became Himself for your teaching that which He made; for He who made man was made man, but He remained still the unchangeable God, and transplanted manhood into a better condition.

Listen, then, to what He adds to the words, “Now is my soul troubled.” “And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Your name.” He has taught you here what to think of, what to say, on whom to call, in whom to hope, and whose will, as sure and divine, to prefer to your own, which is human and weak. Imagine Him not, therefore, as losing anything of His own exalted position in wishing you to rise up out of the depths of your ruin.

For He thought it meet also to be tempted by the devil, by whom otherwise He would never have been tempted, just as, had He not been willing, He would never have suffered; and the answers He gave to the devil are such as thou also ought to use in times of temptation. And He, indeed, was tempted, but not endangered, that He might show you, when in danger through temptation, how to answer the tempter, so as not to be carried away by the temptation, but to escape its danger. But when He here said, “Now is my soul troubled;” and also when He says, “My soul is sorrowful, even unto death;” and “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;” He assumed the infirmity of man, to teach him, when thereby saddened and troubled, to say what follows: “Nevertheless, Father, not as I will, but as You will.” For thus it is that man is turned from the human to the divine, when the will of God is preferred to his own.

But to what do the words “Glorify Your name” refer, but to His own passion and resurrection? For what else can it mean, but that the Father should thus glorify the Son, who in like manner glorifies His own name in the similar sufferings of His servants? Hence it is recorded of Peter, that for this cause He said concerning him, “Another shall gird you, and carry you whither you would not,” because He intended to signify “by what death he should glorify God.” Therefore in him, too, did God glorify His name, because thus also does He glorify Christ in His members.