Simple Thoughts on the Rosary: Sorrowful Mysteries: The Scourging at the Pillar
I.—From the sole of the foot unto the top of the head there is no soundness therein: wounds and bruises and swelling sores.—Isaias i.
“Then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him” (John 19). This is all the Scripture tells us of a torture universally admitted to have been worse than death.
See in front of Pilate’s hall a large courtyard paved with reddish stones. On its northern side a pillar, two feet and a half in height. Beside the pillar, a step on which the executioner stands to be able to deal his blows with greater force. On the top of the pillar, an iron ring to which our Lord is fastened by His wrists. Note the painfulness of His posture, His body bent, His head bowed down. Look at the scourge, a four-thonged leathern lash, spiked with iron. Each stroke will raise the flesh in bloody furrows, mangling, or cutting it to the bone.
II.—He is our brother and our flesh.—Gen. xxxvii.
The Scourging is one of those mysteries of humiliation, which, were it not a fact, would be beyond the reach of the most daring imagination to conceive. Being a fact, how does it affect us?
We come to it again and again in our beads; we give it a thought, perhaps, and pass on, and it has left no impression. How strange this apathy seems! Is there anything to account for it, or to extenuate it? We may hope that He who is ever ready to find excuse for us, will set it down, not wholly to callousness, but to the deadening influence of familiarity, and to the difficulty we have in bringing home to ourselves that He who suffered was God. We believe it, but there is little realisation and less response. Another reason for our insensibility may be that in this as in other mysteries of the Passion, we observe indolently, we grudge the labour of examining details. In any case, there is abundant matter for humiliation. We cannot see an animal ill-used without firing up with indignation. Yet we can look unmoved upon the noblest of our race, the Man-God, suffering torture such as this.
Were it a criminal at the pillar, one who had done us the foulest injury, one who had sought our life, we should be melted into tears of pity at the first stroke of that awful scourge. And it is the Innocent One, who did no sin, our Friend, our Brother, who is pouring out His Blood for us; it is our God, who has assumed our nature to give to His sufferings in that nature an infinite value, whereby to pay the all but infinite debts we have contracted towards Him. It is God who is thus tortured; God who is subjected to this indignity; God who is silent, patient, counting it all joy to suffer thus for me. O God, my Saviour, who for my sake hast borne such agony, such shame, draw my heart to Thee in this most piteous most touching mystery. Give me a true interior sorrow for my sins, especially for any pampering of my body which has brought Thee to this. Draw me to gratitude and to love, to at least a little appreciation of what Thou didst suffer for me at the pillar. Have patience with the present dulness and coldness of my heart; with the poor return which is all it can now make Thee for Thy love: one day I will pay Thee all.
III.—The Lord was angry with Me on your account.—Deut. 1 One of the things as to which it behoves us to form a true judgment is surely sin. Yet how hard it is to realise its malice! We know too little of what God is to form any adequate idea of what it is to offend Him. Thus we go through life with a false or very imperfect conception of our relations with Him, and are puzzled about many things of which sin is the only true explanation. If only there were a school in which we could sit down and learn and have brought home to us this terrible evil which we call sin!
Here at the pillar is Christ’s school. Here, if anywhere, we may find what we are seeking. Here is an object lesson which may well impress the dullest of “I have given my body to the strikers” (Isaias 50). “I am become as a vessel that is destroyed” (Ps. 30). “The Lord chastising hath chastised me” (Ps. 117), Why? “Why hath the Lord cast down to the earth the glorious one of Israel?” (Lament. 2).
“He was wounded for our iniquities; He was bruised for our sins; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His bruises we are healed” (Isaias 53).
It is by pondering its awful havoc on the Person of the Son of God that we come to realise something of the nature of sin. But we must ponder: a hasty glance is of no avail. We must go from wound to wound, from the sole of the foot to the top of the head, and see how there is no soundness in Him, wounds and bruises and swelling sores.... “The whole head is sick and the whole heart is sad” (Isaias 1), “because the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaias 53).
My God, give light to my mind that I may see in this mystery what Thy saints have seen, and come to understand and take to heart the lesson given me here at such a cost!
IV.—If in the green wood they do these things, what shall be done in the dry?—Luke xxiii.
An hour hence, our Lord on His way to Calvary will be saying these words to the daughters of Jerusalem. As fitly may He say them to us from the pillar of His scourging. If, in Him “who did no sin” (I. Peter 2), who bore its appearance only, sin is so fearfully chastised, what must we expect who are sinners!
“Lord, dost Thou speak this parable to us or likewise to all,” asked Peter, simply, as he sat at his Master’s feet on the Mount of Olives, musing on the warning: “Be you also ready, for at what hour you think not the Son of man will come” (Luke 12). Our Lord made answer: “That servant who knew the will of his lord and did not according to his will shall be beaten with many stripes.... Unless you do penance you shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13).
“All.” Therefore I. Am I ready to meet my Lord? Must I not do penance, the penance of necessity, the penance of prudence, the penance of love? The penance of necessity—repenting of my past sins and confessing them, and shunning all sin and the dangerous occasions of sin? The penance of prudence, not leaving for the fearful expiation of the next life the whole debt of temporal punishment my sins have entailed, but accepting in the spirit of penance the troubles that come to me in the course of God’s Providence, and even imposing on myself small privations which, because free, are of great account with God, and go far to satisfy His Justice. The penance of love. “Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow His steps” (I. Peter 2). He has not dispensed us from suffering because He has suffered so much. And love for Him will not let us dispense ourselves. St. Paul bids us “fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ” (Coloss. 1), the little measure He has left to our love to supply. “Always bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus” (II. Cor. 4). It is an instinct of love to desire to suffer with the beloved. Hence, great love, great mortification; little love, little mortification; no love, no mortification.
V.—I have given my body to the strikers.—Isaias 1.
(1) I see standing at the pillar the most delicately fashioned, the most acutely sensitive of the children of men.
(2) I see Him awaiting the first stroke in an agony of fear, knowing the precise torment each will inflict, up to the point which marks the limit of human endurance, and beyond that limit where His Divinity is to sustain Him for the protraction of His pain.
(3) I see His shrinking shame, more intolerable than any physical torture.
(4) I note how He looks around for a friendly face, a sign of recognition, pity, sympathy. And in vain: “I looked for one that would grieve together with me, and there was none” (Ps. 68).
(5) I see, as the first strokes fall, the flesh quiver, the head fall on the breast, the breath come quick and short. The anguish is unendurable. But He thinks of me and nerves Himself to suffer still more.
(6) I mark the deep wounds as the scourging proceeds; so deep that in many places the bones are laid bare. Towards the end of the hour the sacred body is but one sore.
(7) The cords are cut and He falls to the ground. I see Him summoning up the little strength left Him, to seek His garments thrown here and there. No one to do Him even this service. No one to pity Him. His arms are so weak that He can scarcely lift the seamless robe over His head. It adheres to the raw flesh on every side, and at every movement causes Him unspeakable torture. O God, my Saviour, what must my soul be worth to have been bought at such a price! For I know the meaning of this awful scene. It is to expiate my sensuality that Thou art so shamefully used. It is to win me to sorrow for my sins by showing me the punishment they have deserved. What ought I to do after this? Can I see Thee making such reparation for me and not desire to make some satisfaction myself? If I cannot look out for occasions, shall I not at least bear bodily suffering with patience and unite my pain with Thine?
By His bruises we are healed.—Isaias liii.
O wounds that such a healing need! O healing that a God must bleed And agonise to win! O ye whose peace His stripes shall earn, Round the red pillar throng, to learn The awfulness of sin!
VI.—I am become as a man without help.—Ps. lxxxvii.
(1) I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none: and for one that would comfort me, and I found none (Ps. 68).
(2) There is no one that hath regard to my soul (Ps. 141).
(3) Friend and neighbour thou hast put far from me, and my acquaintance, because of misery (Ps. 87).
(4) My familiar friends are departed from me (Job (5) I looked on my right hand and beheld, and there was no one that would know me (Ps. 141).
They that knew me have forgotten me and he whom I loved most is turned against me (Job (6) Go your way, my children, go your way, for I am left alone (Baruch 4).
(7) I am forgotten as one dead from the heart (Ps. 30).
(8) O all ye that pass by the way, attend and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow (Lament. 1).
(9) Have pity on me, have pity on me, at least you my friends, for the hand of the Lord hath touched me (Job 19).
(10) Attend to my supplication, for I am brought very low (Ps. 141).