Our Lord has just been condemned to death; the crowd freed a thief and called for the crucifixion of the prince of life. Tied to a pillar, the soldiers tear into his flesh with lashes of the whip, only stopping when they are exhausted. We see Jesus as the suffering servant, the man of sorrows as depicted in the Book of Isaiah. "But he was wounded for our iniquities : he was bruised for our sins" (Is. 53:5). Surely there can be no better fulfilment of this prophecy than the sufferings of Christ? To the crowd who mercilessly cried for the blood of an innocent man he must have seemed to be "despised and the most abject of men" (Is. 53:3). It is because of our sins that Our Lord suffers such agony. St. Thomas Aquinas thought that because Our Lord was not subject to the effects of original sin, his body must have been much more sensitive than the bodies of other human beings, dulled as they are by the effects of sin, and so the physical pain he endured must have been so much greater. In the scourging we are taught that to follow Christ is to be unafraid of shame and humility for the sake of the Gospel, following Christ will sometimes cause us to be attacked by those who oppose the Gospel through misunderstanding, hatred or a failure to love others. In this time of Lent let us learn to submit our hearts so that we may be freed from fear and pride.
Monday, March 3, 2008
The Second Sorrowful Mystery - The Scourging at the Pillar
Our Lord has just been condemned to death; the crowd freed a thief and called for the crucifixion of the prince of life. Tied to a pillar, the soldiers tear into his flesh with lashes of the whip, only stopping when they are exhausted. We see Jesus as the suffering servant, the man of sorrows as depicted in the Book of Isaiah. "But he was wounded for our iniquities : he was bruised for our sins" (Is. 53:5). Surely there can be no better fulfilment of this prophecy than the sufferings of Christ? To the crowd who mercilessly cried for the blood of an innocent man he must have seemed to be "despised and the most abject of men" (Is. 53:3). It is because of our sins that Our Lord suffers such agony. St. Thomas Aquinas thought that because Our Lord was not subject to the effects of original sin, his body must have been much more sensitive than the bodies of other human beings, dulled as they are by the effects of sin, and so the physical pain he endured must have been so much greater. In the scourging we are taught that to follow Christ is to be unafraid of shame and humility for the sake of the Gospel, following Christ will sometimes cause us to be attacked by those who oppose the Gospel through misunderstanding, hatred or a failure to love others. In this time of Lent let us learn to submit our hearts so that we may be freed from fear and pride.
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