Church Fathers on Matthew 26:46

After His persevering prayer, after His departures and several returns, He takes away their fear, restores their confidence, and exhorts them to 'sleep on, and take their rest.'

Indeed it behoved them to watch, but He said this to shew that the prospect of coming evils was more than they would bear, that He had no need of their aid, and that it must needs be that He should be delivered up.

Or, the sleep He now bids His disciples take is of a different sort from that which is related above to have befallen them. Then He found them sleeping, not taking repose, but because their eyes were heavy, but now they are not merely to sleep, but to 'take their rest,' that this order may be rightly observed, namely, that we first watch with prayer that we enter not into temptation, and afterwards sleep and take our rest, when having 'found a place for the Lord, a tabernacle…