The Third Sorrowful Mystery
The Crowning with Thorns
1. Having had Jesus flogged in spite of the fact that he believed in
His innocence, Pilate showed Him to the mob in the vain hope that, when
they had seen His bleeding body, their hatred would be appeased. It was
no use. The enraged crowd kept crying: “Crucify him!” (Luke 23:21) Then
Pilate, with a shameful gesture of open injustice, abandoned Jesus to the will of the Jewish executioners. “Jesus he delivered to their will.” (Luke 23:25)
It was probably before Pilate showed Him to the mob for the second time
(Cf. John 19:4) that the sad scene of the crowning with thorns took
place. “The soldiers led him away into the courtyard of the praetorium,
and they called together the whole cohort. And they clothed him in
purple, and plaiting a crown of thorns, they put it upon him, and began
to greet him, ‘Hail King of the Jews!’ And they kept striking him on the
head with a reed, and spitting upon him; and bending their knees, they
did homage to him.” (Mark 15:15-19)
This new torture was a
diabolical invention decreed by no law or authority. Purely for their
own savage entertainment, the soldiers procured a bundle of thorned
reeds which they wound into the shape of a crown and pressed into Jesus’
head.
Mary knew what was going on. She was there with the holy
women when Pilate brought her bloodstained Son before the people, and
their blasphemous yells pierced her tender heart. Her mother’s heart
felt the sharp thorns, too, but she accepted this affliction with
resignation, silently protesting against the insults of the crowd by
acts of adoration and of love. We should behave in this way also. We
should participate in the passion of Jesus by offering our own
sufferings and we should make acts of love and of self-surrender in
reparation for these acts of blasphemy.
2. When we see Jesus
scourged and crowned with thorns, how can we complain if our path in
life is also strewn with thorns? Jesus was the embodiment of innocence;
He was God, yet He willed to suffer in order to expiate our sins and to
teach us that the surest road to Heaven is the way of the Cross. It was
because the Saints understood this so clearly that they were so eager to
participate in the passion of Jesus Christ and to offer Him not only
the inevitable sorrows of life, but also voluntary sufferings of their
own as a proof of their love. Anyone who does not desire mortification
and suffering does not desire Heaven, because he is not a true follower
of Jesus crucified. “They who belong to Christ,” says St. Paul, “have
crucified their flesh with its passions and desires.” (Gal. 5:24) Let us
meditate carefully on the significance of these stern words, so often
forgotten today.
3. By the crowning with thorns Jesus wished to
make special reparation for sins of thought, thoughts of impurity and
of hatred, thoughts of ambition and of anger, and thoughts of despair.
The evil thought is often the beginning of the greatest sins. It is
essential to resist immediately and resolutely before the thought takes
hold of us and arouses our evil instincts and desires. When we are
tormented by bad thoughts let us look at Jesus crowned with thorns and
ask Him for the grace to resist generously and successfully.
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