Third Sorrowful Mystery

After Jesus was brutally scourged, He was mocked and reviled by the Roman soldiers.  They had heard that some called Him the “King of the Jews,” so in order to humiliate and torture Him all the more, they made a “crown” of thorns and thrust it upon his head.  They mockingly knelt before Jesus, but then spit on Him and even struck his head with sticks, thus increasing the penetrating pain of the thorns.  I read that there is evidence from the Shroud of Turin that shows nearly fifty wounds in Jesus’ head because of the thorns.  This is a particularly sensitive area of the body, since it needs to be well protected.  I read also that in the scalp there are about 140 pain receptor cells per square centimeter.  Thus the crown of thorns caused Our Lord a tremendous amount of pain.

The Bible also says that the soldiers struck Jesus with their hands at this time, presumably in the face.  As if it wasn’t enough to cover his whole body with deep wounds at the scourging, they had to torture Him in the head and face as well.  All of these horrible sufferings were just preliminary to the crucifixion!  We will never fully grasp the extent and depth of what Jesus suffered for us, even if only considering his bodily torments and afflictions.

Jesus let his face be disfigured by bruises, wounds, and blood, so that our souls, disfigured by sin, could be restored to the image of God.  Perhaps it would be good to have before us an image of the Shroud as we meditate on the third sorrowful mystery.  We see the bloodstains all around his head, which came from the crown of thorns, and, looking closely, we can also see how his face was bruised and battered.  The Face of God!  This is what the Chosen People had sought for many generations, but because they “did not know the time of [their] visitation” (Lk 19:44), they also did not recognize their divine Savior when He was right in their midst.  The serene majesty and the long-suffering love manifested in this image of Christ in death is silent testimony to the truth of the divine incarnation and the freely-willed sacrifice for our salvation.

The Byzantine Offices present many paradoxes about the Passion, like the one I made above about Jesus’ face being disfigured by wounds so that our sin-disfigured souls could reflect his image.  Jesus drank gall and vinegar so that we could taste the sweetness of his love and mercy.  His side was pierced by a spear so that the flaming sword could be withdrawn from the gate of Paradise.  His hands were nailed so as to make reparation for the hands of Adam and Eve that sinfully reached for the forbidden fruit.  He was fastened to the Cross so that we could be set free from our sins, etc.

Let us return to the crown of thorns.  It was a crown of mockery and torture, yet we see in the Gospel of John that Pilate, though a coward and an unbeliever, still proclaims the kingship of Jesus no less than four times in the Passion narrative.  He begins by asking those who handed Jesus over to him: “…you have a custom that I should release one man to you at the Passover; will you have me release for you the King of the Jews?”  After the scourging and crowning with thorns, Pilate brought Jesus out and said: “Behold, your King!” (This in itself is, for us, a powerful statement of the royal majesty and glory of the Lord even in the midst of his suffering, for according to St John, the Passion of Jesus is an integral part of his glorification.)  And again: “Shall I crucify your King?”  Finally, when the chief priests objected to Pilate writing “The King of the Jews” as an inscription on the Cross, Pilate refused to change it, saying: “What I have written I have written”—as if to tell the world, “He really is your King, though you delivered Him to death as a criminal.”

There’s a practical point that we might also wish to bring into our meditation on this mystery, which is something I often do.  We might say that Jesus permitted his head to be penetrated by painful thorns so that our minds might be cleansed of evil thoughts.  So when I see Him crowned with thorns, I bring to Him whatever bad, inappropriate, untimely, vain, superfluous, or stupid thoughts that might be circulating in my lame brain, and I ask Him to bind them in his crown of thorns, so that there may be in me nothing that is displeasing to Him, and that anything the devil might try to inject into me or hurl at me may meet the protective wall of those blessed thorns and recoil on his own loathsome head.

Everything that Jesus suffered was for us; all of it can be applied to us in one way or another; nothing that we suffer is alien to Him, right down to the insults and the slaps.  He has been there; He has felt it; He endured it out of love for us and now offers us the grace and strength He gained for us.  Let us think about these things…