Meditations on the Sorrowful Mysteries: The Scourging

Mediations on the Sorrowful Mysteries from an heirloom bible published in 1953. See the First Sorrowful Mystery here.

The Second Sorrowful Mystery: The Scourging

Because Jesus Christ is divine every one of His actions is of infinite value; consequently, He could have redeemed all of mankind by offering to divine justice a single heartbeat within His mother's womb. In that event, most men might have thought, as many do right now, that sin is a trifling matter. Because of the callousness and carelessness of men Jesus Christ determined to undertake the agonizing Passion in order to impress upon mankind the dreadful seriousness and the horrible consequences of sin. The Sorrowful Mysteries principally demonstrate just one portion of the penalty of anybody's serious sin: they show how the senses of one Man were punished because of sin. They do not reveal and they cannot reveal that withering realization of separation from God which drew Christ the one cry of anguish during the entire Passion, "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?"

The sting of the lash along Christ's flesh has long since subsided. We cannot stay the scourge that has already fallen, but we can learn from Christ's atonement that serious sin inevitably leads to terrible expiation.