He is Scourged
Second Sorrowful Mystery
The Scourging at the Pillar
His Blood Poured Out, and the Pattern of the Martyrs
When we read the three Gospel passages that mention it (Matthew 27:26, Mark 15:15, and John 19:1), the scriptural account is only a sentence. And yet the word scourging needed no more than a sentence for the early Christians, many of whom were themselves scourged and lived, or saw others scourged and killed shortly after.
The scourging held several points at once. First, the sheer physical brutality of it. This was an act designed to hasten the death to come on the cross. If the Romans were anything, they were skilled in brutal deaths and in the process of carrying them out. A medical examiner and an orthopedic surgeon have each gone into great depth on the many tortures Christ endured for us.
The enduring of the scourging shows us how the martyrs would one day suffer for Him. It is a point of knowing that we too will suffer: some as much as Christ did, others far less. The whipping Christ received, the shedding of His Most Precious Blood poured out for us, is the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah.
The word rendered "stripes" is exactly the mark a scourge leaves. The Suffering Servant Isaiah foretold seven centuries before is bound to the pillar, and the wounds that heal us are the wounds of the whip. This endurance is what St. Augustine drew out in his homily on the Gospel of St. John:
The physical torture of the scourging is an extreme form of mortification, the Catholic practice of asceticism, a way of living that trains mind, body, and soul in the virtuous life. Mortification is how we die to self and grow in Christ.
Its ordinary forms are gentle by comparison: fasting and abstaining from meat on the Fridays of the year in accordance with canon law, since Friday is the day Christ died for us, along with the fasts and abstinences of the liturgical calendar, and the familiar giving up of coffee, tea, or chocolate for Lent. Small deaths, all of them, that turn the soul toward God.
Here the redemptive suffering of the whole Sorrowful set takes on a shape we can imitate. Christ's scourging was not pain for its own sake; His blood was poured out to heal. Our own mortifications, small as they are, joined to His, become a share in that redeeming work rather than mere self-denial.
To mortify the body is to quiet the clamor of what we want long enough to hear what the soul needs. In dying to the sinful life we live, we rise again in Christ, and grow in the virtues, drawing nearer to Him who is all virtuous.
The fruit of this mystery is mortification, and mortification is a good. Mortification of the body is the way we focus on the soul and on how we are living in Christ. We die to self, we die to the sinful life we live, and we rise again in Him. In mortifying our desires we can see past what the body wanted to what the soul truly needs, and so grow in the virtues, and grow closer to Christ.
This decade prays the trial that led to the scourging, from Gethsemane's arrest to Pilate's sentence. Pray each verse, then the Ave Maria. (Scripture here follows the RSV-2CE.)
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