Meditations on the Sorrowful Mysteries: The Crowning with Thorns

The Third Sorrowful Mystery: The Crowning with Thorns

The crowning with thorns was intended to be more devastating than the scourging, because the crowning attempted to make a mockery of all of Christ's dignity. The scourging inflicted pain on the body of Christ, the crowning imposes humiliation on His soul. Christ chose to illustrate that since body and soul participate in sin, body and soul must share in satisfaction. As was the sin of Lucifer, every sin of every man is primarily an act of proud rebellion of the human will against the authority of God. The rebellion is senseless, and it must end in humiliation. Human beings are not divine and independent; they are creatures, and because they are intelligent creatures their whole happiness must consist in knowing, loving, and serving God. Their greatest misery will always come from attempting to be independent of God without Whom they can neither be nor be happy.

Sin and humiliation are inseparable. We must expect humiliations in our lives because we have arrogantly summoned them by our sins. When humiliations do arrive, we should be intelligent and honest enough not to blame someone else for what we have ordered for ourselves.