The
Scourging At The Pillar
Fruit
Of The Mystery:
Purity
The
following meditations are provided to assist you
while praying the Holy Rosary. It is offered in a
format where a question is posed to lead the
meditation and then is followed by an answer below
it. It
may be more helpful to grow in your meditation
skills if you try to contemplate the question while
praying this decade of the Rosary, and view the
possible answer upon completing the prayers for the
Mystery.
The
meditations below offer possible answers to
questions regarding these Mysteries.
Because the Wisdom of God is infinite, there
are limitless insights that one may gain from
meditating repeatedly upon the questions surrounding
these Mysteries.
There are no wrong or right answers when
praying the Holy Rosary in this way.
We are simply seeking to be inspired in our
understanding of who Jesus is and how much He loves
us, as the Holy Spirit gently guides us through
reflective prayer.
For
many reasons it may be difficult to engage our minds
to enter into meditating on the Mysteries at hand.
An alternative option is to simply meditate
upon the meaning of the core prayers of the Holy
Rosary as you are praying them.
You may find these reflections on the Our
Father, the Hail
Mary and the Glory
Be prayers to be helpful during these times.
The
Scourging
1.
Why does Jesus choose to endure such brutal
violence to every part of His body?
We
learn from Sacred Scripture that not one part of His
body was spared from punishment.
In Jesus’ great love for us, He willingly
accepts these sufferings to repair for every kind of
sin we fall into.
Through the spit in His eyes, Jesus repairs
for our evil gazes and lustful looks; with the
punches to His mouth, Jesus repairs for our vile
language, gossip, and judgments we make on others;
by being tied to the pillar, Jesus repairs for the
bondage of our physical sins; as Jesus is stripped
naked during the scourging, He repairs for those
sins of pride we commit when we try to cover our
sins; the lashes which covered His precious body
repaired for all of the abuses and neglect we
inflict upon our souls through our lustful sins in
our bodies. This
is what the Scriptures mean when they say “By His
stripes we have been healed.” (Isaiah 53:5)
Peer
Pressure
1.
Why does Pontius Pilate condemn Jesus to
death if He is not guilty?
Pontius
Pilate carries the tremendous burden of being the
one who must pass judgment on Jesus.
Though he could not find any fault in Him, He
subjects Jesus to the most cruel scourging, and
eventual death on the Cross. Although he would like to have released Jesus, he falls prey
to cowardice and fears of what others in authority
might think of him. Do we ever cause Jesus pain and
suffering from the decisions that we make out of
fear of what others in this world may think of us?
The Most
Sacred Heart of Jesus
1.
How was Jesus able to survive such violent
physical assaults?
When
we consider the brutality and violence that Jesus
suffered in His scourging, we begin to get a glimpse
of the strength and courage that gave life to His
Most Sacred Heart. Through the raging fire of perfect charity that burned within
His Heart, Jesus is able to survive these lethal
assaults that would have killed any other man.
In His unquenchable desire for the salvation
of all souls, Jesus could not be beaten down; He may
have fallen or been knocked down, but He always rose
again out of love for us.
No man took His life from Him- in His own
power Jesus offered it to the Father on the Cross
when He exclaimed, “Into Your hands, I commend My
Spirit.” Jesus
literally gave His life to the Father as an offering
of love for us.
2.
To what can we compare the pains that Jesus
suffered as a result of the scourging?
During
the scourging Jesus was not only struck by wooden
sticks, but also with whips with metal balls at the
ends that deeply bruised even His bones, and whips
with hooks that literally tore the flesh from His
body and exposed His ribs.
If we consider the extreme pain that we
experience when the light touch of a tee shirt
grazes our sun-burned shoulders, we can only imagine
the unbearable pain borne after the scourging from
His cloak wearing against His flesh which was torn
away from His body.
Now imagine the pain He must have experienced
when His garments, which would have adhered to His
bloody wounds, were stripped off during the crowning
with thorns and later as they nailed Him to the
Cross. We
must consider that this was all borne with the
greatest love and affection so that we might obtain
the grace needed to make our hearts pure like His.
The Passion
1.
How does the Passion remain present
throughout time?
In
God’s infinite love for His children, He unites us
to His beloved Son.
In this way, with Christ as the head, the
Church becomes the mystical Body of Christ.
And as the members of His mystical Body
continue to suffer on His behalf in time, the
Passion continues to be repeated in the Church.
As Christ did with His Mother Mary through
His Passion, we are called to remain united with
them in prayer, in silence and in suffering during
these most difficult hours.
If we bear all things patiently and persevere
with them in love, our suffering and sacrifices can
be used to draw down graces for our own
sanctification, and the salvation of souls.
Purity
1.
How is
Jesus calling us to become more pure through the
scourging at the pillar?
The
fruit of this mystery is purity.
The Passion of Christ is offered to us to
strengthen us in our weaknesses.
And the scourging at the pillar was offered
to the Father by Jesus to strengthen us specifically
when we commit sins against purity in our bodies.
We gain strength from this Mystery by
considering what Jesus endured to deliver us from
such sins. Here
our innocent and Holy Lord was judged guilty in a
most disturbing way by Pilate, the chief priests,
the elders, the crowd chanting for His Crucifixion.
He was judged guilty of our sins.
Barabbas, the unjust one who represents each
of us, was set free from the burdens of his sins, as
Jesus was condemned to death.
Jesus is then led to the pillar for
scourging. In reparation for acts of our immodesty
with our bodies, He is stripped naked before the
crowd, including His most Holy Mother Mary. Jesus
was beaten so badly at the pillar that His body
appeared as a single bloody wound.
The violence and the bloodshed were seemingly
endless. Each
time we choose to continue in the lustful sins of
our bodies, we add another stripe to the lacerations
inflicted upon our Lord.
It is by meditating upon these wounds that we
are moved to repentance, and become healed from such
sins.
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