Then there was the sorrow which Jesus experienced, and to which he was peculiarly sensitive because his love for others was so great – and never was a love so treated.  And so, when on Palm Sunday he came within sight of Jerusalem where, as he knew, the rulers and the people would soon be clamouring for his crucifixion, he wept over the city; not only because it had always rejected him, but also because he foresaw the siege of the city and the massacre of its inhabitants by the Romans.  And his sorrow was to become unbearably immediate and personal, a sorrow brought upon him by his own friends and disciples.  Peter would deny him; all would desert him; and one would of set purpose betray him.

And on the Cross came the final and utter desolation when he was deprived of the one comfort which he had always enjoyed – the sense of his Father’s presence and support.

Yet there is no record that he ever reproached his disciples afterwards for the way they had treated him; and the peacefulness of his last words on the Cross show that he surmounted his sorrow unembittered and with the same unruffled trust in God which he had always possessed and which he now displayed in the face of death itself.  “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”, he said and settled down to die as a child settles down to sleep.