Gethsemane - Fr David Tremble

Recently I sat side by side with Fr David Tremble MGL on the way to a Canberra outreach.  Fr David has spent about 5 years in Darwin during which time he has known the El Shaddai community in Darwin.  He has said masses for them during times Fr Cornelius was not available.   I have requested him to greet our Sydney community especially around this time of our Sydney 17th Anniversary. (BRoME)

This is  Father David Tremble from Missionaries of God's Love bringing encouragement and congratulations on the anniversary for El Shaddai communities. Just recently,  I've returned from journeying with others on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  I wanted to share with you a highlight of that journey. I was taken by the landscape of the Bible lands with the valleys and the mountains.  I'd understand that over your last years of commitment and  community together you would have experienced the highs and the lows. We also prayed and encountered the places of Jesus' ministry and birth and then were really taken by his passion and the places that marked out that journey for him to Calvary.  One thing to share with you is:  I discovered the meaning of the word Gethsemane.  It means oil press, olive oil press.  And we saw the way in which the olives are crushed in this press.  And nothing is wasted, everything gets saved.  The pits are dried out and used for fuel.  The flesh is there for food and then the  oil for cooking and for light.  I understood  now more the meaning of this word Gethsemane having reflected on Jesus' anguish in the garden, and remembering also those words from the psalms when He says, "I was hard-pressed and fallen but  You came to rescue me."  I understood more that this deep anguish of Jesus while the disciples were   struggling to keep awake with him, when he took on willingly saying: "Not my will but Your will be done, Father," taking on the burden of our own shame, our own sin, so that he could bring freedom to us.  Upon the cross in His saying, "It is completed," I just understood a little more something of His steadfast love, and that nothing was wasted even in His moments of greatest anguish for us, and that what He gave was for life and for love.  And so as you come close to this time of your anniversary, just to encourage you in a steadfast way in which you  continue in your commitment to one another and to our Lord Jesus, knowing that He's with you in the valleys and in the mountains, and  that He will bring each one of you through to the fullness of his call and of his plan for you.  God bless.

Fr David Tremble, MGL
10 October 2009, 9:15am
On the Greyhound bus from Sydney to Canberra