The Sorrowful Mysteries - Meditations by Abp. Fulton Sheen

The Agony in the Garden

Just as a kind man tries in the face of pain to relieve the sufferings of his friend, so goodness in the face of evil takes upon itself the punishment that evil deserved. Every mother, if she only could, would take upon herself the pain of her child. A father pays the debts of a prodigal son as if they were his own debts. Our Lord, though He owed no sin, in His agony in the Garden consented to feel the internal effects of sin, and on the Cross He also experienced its external effects. These internal effects were sorrow, fear, and a sense of loneliness, as the psalm says: “I looked for pity, but there was none” (Ps 69:20).

Christ allowed His head to feel blasphemies as if they had been spoken by His own lips; He allowed His hands to feel the sin of theft as if He Himself had stolen; He allowed His Body to feel the guilt of dishonor as if it were the cause of it itself. Innocence knows sin better than the guilty man, because guilty men are already a part of sin.

Sin is in the blood. The drunkard, the libertine, and the tyrant have sin stamped not only on their soul, but also in their brain, in the cells of their body, and in their facial expression. Therefore, if sin is in the blood, blood must be shed to make amends for sin. Our Lord never desired that any other blood than His own should be shed for the redemption of sins. Because men do not invoke the Blood of Christ for the redemption of their sins, we find ourselves now in a state of war, shedding one another's blood.

The agony in the Garden is not a triumph of plans and intrigues woven by traitors and enemies; it was permitted by Divine decree: “this is your hour” (Lk 22:53). Satan has his hour, but God has His day!

The Scourging at the Pillar

Seven centuries earlier it had been foretold that our Lord would be so wounded for our sins that we would esteem Him “stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted” (Is 53:4-5). The time had come for this prophecy to be fulfilled. Omnipotence is bound to a pillar in the hour of His death, just as He was wrapped in swaddling clothes in the hour of His birth.

The scourging at the pillar must have been cruel, because every time our Lord foretold His passion, He always made special mention of His scourging, as if to emphasize the horror of His suffering. After the Resurrection, Saint Peter, recalling the moment when he stood in the outer courtyard, listening to the whip falling on the Body of Christ, and hearing at the same time that our Lord did not utter any complaint, wrote: “When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten” (1 Pet 2:23).

Scourging is an act of reparation for the excessive cult of the body. “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord” (1 Cor 6:13). Making amends for the sin of self-indulgence, His Body, like a second Ark of the Covenant, is stripped bare before blasphemous eyes; the Bridegroom of souls becomes a plaything for mockers. No one knows how many stripes He received. The prophet foretold that He would be so scourged that the bones of His body could be numbered. His light enlightens us, and with His stripes we are healed.

The Crowning with Thorns

Just as the scourging was reparation for the sins of the body, so the crowning with thorns was an expiation for the sins of the mind-for the atheists who wish there were no God, for the doubters whose own evil life clouds their thinking, for the egoists centered on themselves.

The soldiers cursed as the thorns pricked their fingers. And later they cursed the Lord as they pressed onto His head the crown of thorns, a mockery of a royal diadem. They handed Him a reed, a symbol of His kingdom, regarded as false and fragile as a reed. His Body, already hanging from Him like purple shreds, was covered with a purple robe to mock His claim to reign over hearts and nations. Blindfolding Him, they struck Him, telling Him to prophesy and guess who dealt Him the blow. And then they bowed before Him in mock homage, spitting in His face, so that all the martyrs in the world might keep their courage in the hour of their martyrdom.

In this Mystery is fulfilled the truth of our Savior's warning: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (Jn 15:18-19). If anyone expects to keep their faith and escape the mockery of the world, they are either weak in their faith, or not brave enough in goodness to take upon themselves the mocking insults of the second purple robe and the torturing crown of thorns.

The Carrying of the Cross

Every cross would be easy to carry if only we could fit it to ourselves. Our Lord's cross was not made by Him, but for Him. Crosses and sufferings fall upon our shoulders. Their acceptance makes them our own. Our Lord even said that there would be at least seven crosses in a week: “take up his cross daily and follow me” (Lk 9:23).

There are two kinds of crosses: pure crosses that come from the outside, such as pain, persecution, and mockery, and internal or impure crosses that are the result of our sins. They are: sorrow, despair, and misery. These latter crosses can be avoided. They arise as a result of opposing the will of God. The vertical beam of the cross symbolizes the will of God; the crossbeam represents our will. When one will crosses another, we get a cross.

Our Lord never promised that we would be without a cross; He only promised that the cross would never defeat us. Saint Peter so loved the cross that when the time for his execution came, he asked to be crucified upside down.

May He, in whom no fault was found except excessive love, make us hate the weight of sin that brought Him the cross. The whole cross carried in union with His will and in His footsteps is easier to bear than the splinters against which we rebel.

The Crucifixion and Death of Jesus

Our Lord spent thirty years in obedience, three years He dedicated to teaching, three hours it took Him for the work of redemption. But in what way did He redeem us? Suppose a golden chalice was stolen from the altar and then melted down into a large ashtray. Before this gold returns to the altar, it must be cast into the fire, where all impurity will be burned away; then the chalice must be melted anew, blessed, and only then restored to sacred use.

Sinful man resembles such a chalice that began to be used for blasphemous purposes. He lost his resemblance to God and his lofty destiny as a child of God. Therefore, our Lord assumed human nature to represent us all; He cast it into the flames of Calvary to burn away and remove all impurity. Later, rising from the dead, He became the new Head of a new humanity, a Head upon whom we are all to model ourselves.

The Cross proves that unless there is a Good Friday in our life, there will never be an Easter Sunday in it. If there is no crown of thorns, we will never attain the luminous halo. Without a scourged body, there will be no body raised to glory. The death of the lower ego is the condition for the resurrection of the higher self.

The world says to us, just as it said to Him on the Cross: “Come down, and we will believe.” But if Christ had come down from the Cross, He would never have saved us. It is a human thing to come down from the cross; it is a Divine thing to hang on it.

O, Savior of the World, a broken heart is the best cradle of love! Strike my heart, as Moses struck the rock, so that Your love may rush into it!