Pray The Rosary – The Third Sorrowful Mystery
The Third Sorrowful Mystery – The Crowning With Thorns.
Within recent times with all the wars and conflicts, our world has become an even more dangerous place that pays scant courtesy even to children – sometimes referring to them as ‘collateral damage.’ We have seen several very graphic and painful images of the suffering that children have had to endure as a result of the evil in men’s hearts. It makes you wonder how much more? So too after Jesus was beaten, you are tempted to think, ‘how much more?!’
27Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. 28They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, 29and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand and knelt in front of him and mocked him. “Hail, king of the Jews!” they said. 30They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again. 31After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.
(Mt. 27: 27-31)
Meditation on the Third Sorrowful Mystery
The people who beat and tortured Jesus were very, very cruel. It was not enough for them to beat him the way that they did and with the type of whips that they used that would literally dig into his flesh, much to the amusement of the soldiers. For his cruel torturers, the beating was not enough. They stripped him and put a purple robe on his battered bloody body. That must have sent a new wave of pain through Jesus’s body.
Dearest Mother Mary, you stood by not too far away, heart-broken as they made a crown of thorns and put it on your son’s head. I am sure that they did not gently rest it on his head. They rammed it, pressed it into his skull. They did everything possible to humiliate Jesus as they spat on him, they mocked him, they struck him repeatedly. Then those cruel torturers pulled back off the purple robe that they had placed on him earlier, putting back on his original clothing. One can only imagine the immense pain that Jesus experienced as they pulled the purple robe off. Every cruel deed done to Jesus your son was for you Mother Mary, the painful fulfillment of the prophecy spoken by the Prophet Simeon that ‘a sword will pierce your own soul’
Prayer
The third sorrowful mystery causes us to ponder on the times that we may have been humiliated or where we may have humiliated others. Mother Mary please pray for us that our hearts would be turned towards Jesus your son and that we would treat others in a way that we ourselves would like to be treated. We also pray Mother Mary for the millions of misplaced people resulting from the wars and conflicts all over the world. We ask you O Mother Mary to please protect those who have been made widows and orphans because of violence and wars. Please lead them to Jesus your Son.
