TO HEAL THE BROKEN HEARTED - PART 1

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised."
(Luke 4:18)

When the Saviour proclaimed Himself to be the Messiah following His experience in the wilderness of temptation, by reading the above scripture to a Sabbath congregation in Nazareth, He pointed to the central theme of His mortal mission, His eventual Atonement, which was to be the healing power 'not only for sin but also for carelessness, inadequacy, and the entire range of mortal bitterness' (Bruce C. Hafen, The Broken Heart, p 1). Now nearing the end of His mortal ministry and following the Last Supper, Jesus led the apostles to the foot of the Mount of Olives, to a quiet garden He liked to go (Luke 22:39) called Gethsemane and there He exacted the healing power for all mankind from the exquisite spiritual anguish He was foreordained to suffer. Through a process, not comprehended by mere mortals, He suffered the effects of sin and mortality only a God could suffer to pave the way to eternal life for all mankind. The scope of His Passion escapes our finite minds as we consider the following:

"His Atonement is infinite - without an end. It was also infinite in that all humankind would be saved from never-ending death. It was infinite in terms of His immense suffering. It was infinite in time, putting an end to the preceding prototype of animal sacrifice. It was infinite in scope - it was to be done once for all. And the mercy of the Atonement extends not only to an infinite number of people, but also to an infinite number of worlds created by Him. It was infinite beyond any human scale of measurement or mortal comprehension. (Russell M. Nelson, The Atonement, Ensign Nov 1996)."

The Saviour's Atonement was performed for every age, every dispensation, every world and every person, hence the appropriate symbolism of His bleeding from every pore and not just some (D&C 19:18). The severity of anguish and pain causing Him, even God, to  be 'sore amazed' (Mark 14:33). Up to this point He understood what He must do cognitively but not experientially: "He struggled and groaned under a burden such as no other being who has lived on earth might even conceive as possible. It was not physical pain, nor mental anguish alone, that caused Him to suffer such torture as to produce an extrusion of blood from every pore; but a spiritual agony of soul such as only God was capable of experiencing. No other man, however great his powers of physical or mental endurance, could have suffered so; for His human organism would have succumbed and syncope would have produced unconsciousness and welcome oblivion. He had never personally known the exquisite and exacting process of such an atonement. Thus, when the agony came in its fullness, it was so much, much worse than even He with His unique intellect had ever imagined...The cumulative weight of all mortal sins - past, present, and future - pressed upon that perfect, sinless, and sensitive Soul! (Maxwell, Neal A., Conference Report, April 1985, p 92)

If we cannot even begin to fathom the scope and depth of such a sacrifice on our behalf, how can we believe the reality of it? Even though the Saviour is the Saviour of every person of every world He has created, He is the Saviour of The One. When He visited the inhabitants of the American continent following His resurrection, He invited them to feel the prints in His hands and feet that they might know that He was the God of Israel and the God of the whole earth and that He was slain for the sins of the world (3 Nephi 11:14). When the multitude went forth to do so, they went 'forth one by one until they had all gone forth' (3 Nephi 11:15). In this way they could witness that the Atonement was performed for them individually and not for humanity collectively. Imagine touching the Saviour's scars and not feeling the personal nature of the greatest act of mercy, love and grace. Very few of us in this dispensation will get to have such an experience in mortality but the Saviour can still become just as real as we strive to know Him by being His disciples. As we live the gospel, study the scriptures and make active the Atonement in our lives, He will reveal Himself to us in ways that will make the prints of the nails in His hands and His feet a factual reality on par with that of the ancients who had spoken to Him face to face. When His sacrifice for us becomes real we will be encircled in the arms of His love and we will know that through Him and by Him we will be exalted on high to live in the realms of eternity forever.

"I seemed to be in the Garden of Gethsemane, a witness of the Saviour's agony. I saw Him as plainly as ever I have seen anyone. Standing behind a tree in the foreground, I beheld Jesus, with Peter, James and John, as they came through a little wicket gate at my right, leaving the three Apostles there, after telling them to kneel and pray, the Son of God passed over to the other side, where He also knelt and prayed. It was the same prayer with which all Bible readers are familiar: 'Oh my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt'. As He prayed the tears streamed down His face, which was toward me. I was so moved at the sight that I also wept, out of pure sympathy. My whole heart went out to Him; I loved Him with all my soul, and longed to be with Him as I longed for nothing else. (Orson F. Whitney, Through Memory's Halls, Life Story of Orson Whitney, pp 81-83)"

"The Sanhedrin and the temple guards brought Him to judgement and to the Antonia Fortress. Pilate brought him to the cross. But I brought Him to Gethsemane - my life, my choices, my sins."

(Ted L. Gibbons, Misery and Joy, pp 8-10)