Besides the human dread and fear Jesus experienced in the garden of Gethsemane at the prospect of His approaching passion, St John's gospel also tells us Jesus was "troubled in spirit" at the Last Supper. It wasnot about His own coming suffering, but about His betrayal by Judas. And that must have been a particularly bitter suffering for Jesus. After all, He'd chosen Judas as one of His special 12 and given him the same apostolic training and preparation as the others. Among them, too, Judas must have been seen as competent, reliable and trustworthy, since the care of their common funds was in his hands. Did Jesus not know what would happen? None of the others suspected anything. So the betrayal must have come as a great shock and upset to them too.

Reflecting on Jesus' passion and death, it's mainly His physical sufferings that we think of (notice how overwhelmingly physical is the violence in the film "The Passion of the Christ"). There is so much physical suffering in our world, which Jesus shared in in His own passion. But surely He also shares the suffering of spirit that so many people experience, the psychological suffering of betrayal, misunderstanding, love not responded to, the anxieties and fears that we all know.