Meditation for March 7, The Crowning with Thorns

It was about nine o'clock when the scourging was finished. The crowning with thorns took place soon afterwards, in the court of the guardhouse. Perhaps the soldiers, instead of leading Jesus directly through the portico which opened onto the Forum, made Him pass before the palace of the High Priests, who flayed Him with their sarcasms. From time to time Jesus wiped His bloody face with the robe they had thrown over His shoulders.

A throne was needed for the coronation ceremonies. They looked about and found the base of a broken pillar which they maliciously covered with stones and fragments of broken glass. Having brutally forced our gentle Savior to sit upon it, they tore from His shoulders the robe they had thrown around Him and placed on His back a dirty red cloak. The crown of thorns which they had fashioned resembled a mitre or a bonnet rather than a circlet. It was made of three branches of thorns carefully inter­woven, so that most of the spines were designedly turned in. The tormentors pressed on the top of the crown to force it down and even beat the helmet of pain with sticks. They sometimes snatched from the hands of our Savior the reed that they had placed there as a mock sceptre and struck Him violently on the head with it. Each time the thorns penetrated more deeply, the pain grew more intense, and the blood ran down His already swollen face.

At intervals Jesus opened His mouth, not to complain, but to drink in a swallow of air to relieve His burning fever. His eyes were raised pleadingly to heaven. All this He had foreseen the evening before in the Garden of Olives, and for an instant, His human nature had recoiled from it. All this had been present to Him every moment of His life. But it is one thing to anticipate suffering and quite another thing actually to endure it.
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Adapted from Meditations for Religious
by Father Raoul Plus, S.J. (© 1939, Frederick Pustet Co.)