Christ goes to the Mount of Olives at night

Saint Luke - Chapter 21

Christ goes to the Mount of Olives at night. J-J Tissot

[37] Erat autem diebus docens in templo : noctibus vero exiens, morabatur in monte qui vocatur Oliveti.
And in the daytime, he was teaching in the temple; but at night, going out, he abode in the mount that is called Olivet.

We have seen or heard that when Jesus was in Galilee He often retired at night to some lofty place to pray; when He was in Judæa He continued to do the same, and the Evangelists speak of the Mount of Olives as His retreat when night fell.  This choice of special localities remarkable for their height and isolation is a striking peculiarity in the life of Our Lord, but it was also a traditional Jewish custom to pray in elevated spots, because height was alike symbolic and provocative of the aspirations of the Spirit.  Jesus, Whose life was one long prayer, and Who needed no stimulus to lead Him to long after god with His whole soul, was yet willing to comply with what word to a certain extent the requirements of ritual, and to encompass about his solemn devotions with the solemnity of the mountains and of the night.  May we not suppose, in spite of the silence of the Evangelist, that in these days so near the death of the Master, the Mount of Olives was not the only height which witnessed his petitions?  Near to it there was a spot from which also He could be called the beloved city and which must have attracted Him more than any other, for that spot was Golgotha, where He was so soon to complete His work.  May not Jesus had gone there secretly to pray and to commune with His Father in some mysterious way?  May not His soul have been wrapped in an intensely profound meditation, offering up to God in anticipation the approaching sacrifice and mentally rehearsing, as in a realistic vision, the coming scene, so fraught alike with gloom and consolation?  We really seemed to be justified in imagining something of that kind, for Jesus, in that He was the Son of God as well as the Son of man, could see into the future; now the future for Him, the future of tomorrow was the cross, the cross and Calvary!  How could His soul escape a vision, recurring perhaps some 20 times, of the rising up of the cross?  How could his feet help being drawn in the direction where he was so soon to be set up? 

From The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ by J-J Tissot (1897)

Totus tuus ego sum 

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam