Dear Friends and Benefactors, 


“A single tear shed at the remembrance of the Passion of Jesus is worth more than a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, or a year of fasting on bread and water.” (Saint Augustine).

The history of the Sacred Passion and Death of Our Lord contains excellencies and advantages of its own above all other subjects on which we can exercise ourselves in meditation.  Meditation or mental prayer on the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ is good for all persons and for all conditions of men. 
As Saint Bonaventure explains, “He who desires to go on advancing from virtue to virtue, from grace to grace, should meditate continually on the Passion of Jesus. There is no practice more profitable for the entire sanctification of the soul than the frequent meditation on the sufferings of Jesus Christ.”
Let us, in some detail, examine two of those great sufferings, namely the bloody scourging and the crowning of thorns, according to ”The Great Commentary of Cornelius à Lapide”.

THE BLOODY SCOURGING
“Then (when the Jews had taken on themselves the guilt of Christ’s blood) he released to them Barabbas: and having scourged Jesus, delivered him unto them to be crucified.” (Saint Matthew 27:26). 
Scourged, in Greek φλαγελλώσας, i.e., “when he had scourged.” As is his custom, Saint Matthew tersely sums up Christ’s scourging in a single [Greek] word. Luke and John narrate the sequence of events at greater length, from which it is clear that when Pilate saw that his fourth attempt to release Jesus, by comparing Him with Barabbas, was unsuccessful, he added a fifth and more drastic attempt, namely Christ’s scourging, hoping that this harsh punishment might quell the hatred and fury of the Jews and move them to pity, so that they might spare Jesus’ life. He said, therefore, to the Jews: I find no cause of death in him. I will chastise him, therefore, and let him go (Saint Luke 23:22). And he promptly had him scourged.

NOTES CONCERNING SCOURGING

  1. Scourging among the Romans was the common punishment of slaves, while the punishment for freemen was thrashing, as is plain from the folio volumes De Poenis (1 servorum). The same thing can be found in the book Porcia et Sempronia. Hence the martyrs were scourged to disgrace them. St. Paul, as a Roman citizen, protested vehemently against being scourged, saying: They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned, men that are Romans, and have cast us into prison, etc. (Acts 16:37). Hence in the Acts of several martyrs we read, “The martyr was scourged with a whip, or beaten with rods,” that is, in the manner of children, like a foolish boy that is flogged (thus children are customarily whipped by their schoolmasters). 
  2. Those who were condemned to death, even free persons, were scourged, as though the sentence had made them slaves. Hence the lictores, or attendants of the Roman consuls and governors presented the fasces of rods bound together with an axe, so that they might scourge condemned criminals with them, and then cut off their heads with the axe.
  3. Christ was scourged by Pilate, not after He had been condemned to death, on account of His crucifixion and death, but rather beforehand, so that Pilate might soften the cruel hearts of the Jews by the severity of the scourging and release the chastised man. Because of this scourging, Christ was not scourged again after His condemnation according to the Roman custom. For Christ was scourged, not twice, as some claim, but only once; this is evident if one compares St. Matthew and St. Mark with St. John. For they all speak of one and the same scourging of Christ.
  4. Saint Jerome, in his Epitaph on St. Paula, St. Paulinus (epist. 34), Prudentius, and other ancient authors (cited by our [Jesuit confrere] Jakob Gretser, libr. 1 de Cruce), say that Christ was fastened to a column to be scourged (Calvin, therefore, is wrong to scoff), and that this column, which St. Bede says was made of marble, was afterwards brought to Rome and can be seen in the Church of St. Praxedis. 
    The column is low, three palms high[12-21 inches or 30-52 cm]; if it had been any taller it would have prevented the torturers from scourging Christ from both sides, that is, on the chest as well as on the back. The manner in which Christ was fastened by the hands and arms to the column and scourged is graphically portrayed in words by Jacob Bosius (lib. 1 de Cruce triumphante cap. 13) and Daniel Mallonius (de Stigmat. S. Sindonis, pag. 65). 

SAINT JEROME’S ACCOUNT
Listen to Saint Jerome on this passage: “Jesus was handed over to the soldiers to be scourged, and they lashed with a whip that most sacred body and the breast which contained God. This was done so that—as it is written: “Many are the scourges of sinners” (Ps. 31:10) – by that scourging we might be freed from beatings, since scripture says to the just man: “Nor shall the scourge come near thy dwelling” (Ps. 90:10).”

THE COLUMN
But the column in Rome is small; hence some, with Pancirollus, suppose that it was not preserved entire, but is only a part, namely the base. This column seems to have been enormous, since, as Saint Jerome says in the Epitaph on St. Paula, it supported the portico of the Church: “To her was shown the column, supporting the portico of the Church, flecked with the Lord’s blood, to which He is said to have been bound and scourged.” 
Bosius, however, maintains (lib. de Cruce) that the column at S. Praxedis is not a part, but the whole of the column, and that Saint Jerome is speaking of another column at which Christ was first scourged (for Saint Chrysostom considered that He was scourged twice). That there was another column is also stated in the inscription on the column at S. Praxedis in Rome. Baronius is silent at this passage and ignores the question. 
Moreover, Prudentius, in his hymn on the passion, concurs with S. Jerome. So, too, the columns, to which SS. Peter and Paul were fastened and scourged according to the custom before their deaths, are tall, reaching or surpassing the height of a man. They are extant today in Rome at the church of the Carmelite sisters, Santa Maria Transpontina. 
Therefore, it seems reasonable that this smaller column in the church of Saint Praxedis is either part of or an addition to a larger one, which Saint Jerome and Prudentius mention, or at least one of those to which Christ was bound at night in the house of Caiphas, and was mocked petulantly by the high priest’s servants, and was slapped and buffeted, and perhaps even beaten with rods, sticks or straps; the larger column, then, would be the one at which He was scourged in Pilate’s praetorium by day, as many contemplatives claim, according to Joannes Severanus (lib. de Septem Romae Basilicis, in Ecclesia S. Praxedis).

WHY THE CRUEL SCOURGING?
You may ask, in what respects was this scourging so cruel and savage? 

  1. This can be judged from the fact that Christ was fastened to a short column, and standing with the whole height of His body above it, was completely at the mercy of those who scourged Him. Furthermore, the mere exposure of His virginal and most pure body to these filthy scoundrels and taunting buffoons was a sore affliction to Him. But Christ was stripped twice, or as some say thrice; first, at His scourging; secondly, as others say, when crowned with thorns. This stripping was attended with the greatest pain; for as His garment stuck to His wounds, they were forcibly reopened as it was torn away.
  2. Pilate wished by this scourging to make amends for all the crimes with which Christ was charged, to satisfy the insatiable hatred of the Jews for Christ, and to excite the compassion of the Jews by saying, “Behold the man”. Meaning: “Behold Him who no longer has the appearance of a man, but of some slaughtered animal, His whole body bleeding and marred.”
  3. The soldiers and surely others were so wanton that, without Pilate commanding it, they crowned Christ with thorns on their own cruel initiative. Perhaps the Jews, too, bribed them to scourge Him with greater severity. Blessed Magdalen of Pazzi, a nun of Florence renowned for her sanctity and revelations, saw in a trance Christ scourged by thirty pairs of men, one after the other in succession. Thus, her Life (part 6, page 532); if these things are understood simply and literally, they are astonishing and horrendous. 
    Some say that Christ had five thousand blows inflicted on Him in this scourging. It is said to have been revealed to Saint Bridget that 5,475 wounds were inflicted on Christ during His entire passion, and the far greater part of these wounds were from the scourging. From so many lashes Christ would have died naturally again and again, had not His divinity sustained His flesh, so that it could suffer many things and finally be crucified. But this number is uncertain, different authors give varying figures.
  4. Christ’s bodily frame was extremely refined and delicate, and acutely sensitive to pain, as fashioned by the Holy Spirit, and Christ consequently felt the scourging far more severely than we should have done.
  5. The prophets, and also Christ Himself, foretold that this scourging would be heavy and severe. (See Matth. 20:19 and Job 16:15.) He hath torn me with wound upon wound, meaning: They added blows to blows, wounds to wounds, so that the whole body seemed one continuous wound. Cf. Psalm 72:15, I have been scourged all the day; and Psalm 128:3, The wicked have wrought upon my back, that is, as though they were smiths pounding on an anvil. The Hebrew is ושרח charescu, which can be translated, “The plowmen plowed upon My back,” i.e., they made furrows on My back with scourges, as furrows are made in a field with a plow. Hence Aquila and Theodot translate produxerunt, or “they prolonged their furrow.” This is also suggested by Jacob’s words (Genesis 49:11), “He shall wash his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape”, indicating by His robe and garment His flesh, and by the wine His blood, says Tertullian (lib. 4 contra Marc.).
  6. Christ was struck as slaves were, with small ropes or thongs. Paul of Palatius, a reliable source, adds here, citing weighty authors, that Christ was scourged: 1. with rods of thorns; 2. with cords tipped with iron goads; 3. with chains made of hooks. There were various sorts of scourges in ancient times; namely cords, or strips of dried leather, whips, cudgels, rods of beech, elm, willow, oak, or grapevine; thongs, often tipped with lead, and “scorpions,” as listed by Antonius Gallonius (de Cruciatu Martyrum cap. 4). 
    Saint Isidore explains what scorpions are (Etym. lib. 6 cap. ult.). “Rods are the extremities of branches and trees; if it is light, it is called a rod; if knotty or thorny, it is most properly called a scorpion, because it inflicts a curved wound upon the body.”

SAINT BRIDGET’S REVELATIONS
Finally, Saint Bridget of Sweden relates that the Blessed Virgin was present at Christ’s scourging, and that her pain and sorrow added wondrously to His. Saint Bridget also describes the manner and the barbarity of Christ’s scourging, as revealed to her by the Blessed Virgin (lib. 1 Revel. cap. 10): 
“Then, led to the column, He personally removed His own garments. He Himself placed upon the column His hands, which His enemies tied mercilessly. Thus bound, He had no covering whatsoever, but stood there as He was born, and experienced shame at His nakedness. Then arose His enemies, who stood on every side, since His friends had fled, and scourged His body, which was free of every stain and sin. At the first blow, therefore, I, who stood apart not far off, fell as though dead, and having regained consciousness, saw His body beaten and scourged to the very ribs, so that His ribs could be seen. And what was even yet more bitter still, when the scourges were drawn back, His flesh was furrowed by them. And when my Son was completely bloodied and stood thus lacerated all over, so that no sound spot could be found in Him, nor anything left to be scourged, etc.” 
And in Book 4, chapter 70: “Then at the attendant’s command, He removed His own garments, and voluntarily embracing the column, He was bound with a rope and was lashed with thorny whips. The thorns which sank in, when drawn back, were not plucked out but furrowed His entire body. At the first blow, therefore, I was struck to the heart and was deprived of my senses, and awaking after a while, I saw His body lacerated; His entire body was naked when it was scourged.”

REASON FOR THE SCOURGING
The ‘a priori’ reason was that Christ wished by this scourging to atone for our evil lusts, concupiscence and manifold and serious sins. And in doing this says Saint Thomas (Summa, III Part, q.46, a.6, ad 6), “He did not simply weigh what great virtue His suffering would have from union with the Godhead, but also how much, according to His human nature, His pain would avail for so great a satisfaction.” Moreover, He wished to obtain power and strength for all martyrs to endure bravely every kind of scourging. 
Hence Isaias 53:2-4 says of Him, “There is no beauty in him, nor comeliness. And we have seen him, and there was no sightliness. . .. A man of sorrows and acquainted with infirmity. . .. And we have thought him as it were a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted.”

CHRIST’S REACTION
In all this Christ manifested a marvellous courage and divine patience, fortitude and constancy. He uttered not a groan, gave no sign of His pain, but stood firm as a rock. Indeed, He mastered all the blows and all His sufferings, and subjected them to Himself as the king of sorrows, that He might rule over them from on high. Hence a certain gentile writer, admiring this, exclaimed, “O man of unbroken spirit, who pours forth neither entreaty nor tear!” 
Hence Saint Laurence Justinian (lib. de Triumphali Agone, Cap. 14) says, “Like a giant, unperturbed, He stood, and endured the punishment of the crowning with unaltered mind.” Saint Cyprian (lib. de Bono patientiae) says, “Among the other admirable virtues, with which He gave proofs of His divine majesty, He also preserved a fatherly patience by His continuous endurance.” 
Tertullian, too (lib. de Patientia cap. 3), says, “He who had proposed to hide Himself in man’s form, imitated nothing of man’s impatience. And in this especially ye Pharisees ought to have recognized the Lord, for no one among men could practice patience of this sort.” 
Saint Ambrose, too (serm. 17 in psal. 118), says that “Christ, assailed by calumnies, maintained a triumphant silence.” The Jews ought to have gathered from this more-than-human, indeed divine patience that Christ was a divine man, and was in fact God, as the centurion concluded, saying, “Indeed this man was the Son of God.”

All this was caused by His love of God and mankind. Love triumphed over pain, and compared to that love, all His pains were as nothing. Hence Christ was willing to suffer in all things, and in all His members and senses. 

COMMENTARY OF ST. THOMAS
Saint Thomas Aquinas (Summa, III Part, q.46, a.5, in corpore) thus writes, “For Christ suffered from friends abandoning Him; in His reputation, from the blasphemies hurled at Him; in His honor and glory, from the mockeries and the insults heaped upon Him; in things, for He was despoiled of His garments; in His soul, from sadness, weariness, and fear; in His body, from wounds and scourgings. Thirdly, it may be considered with regard to His bodily members. In His head He suffered from the crown of piercing thorns; in His hands and feet, from the fastening of the nails; on His face from the blows and spittle; and from the lashes over His entire body. Moreover, He suffered in all His bodily senses: in touch, by being scourged and nailed; in taste, by being given vinegar and gall to drink; in smell, by being fastened to the gibbet in a place reeking with the stench of corpses, (‘which is called Calvary’); in hearing, by being tormented with the cries of blasphemers and scorners; in sight, by beholding the tears of His mother and of the disciple whom He loved.” 

SUFFERINGS OF THE MIND
But Christ’s sufferings of mind were by far the greatest. For He was specially wounded by the sins of each single man. He grieved also for the multitude of the lost. He had sympathy for the martyrs and other believers who had to endure sufferings. But Christ’s boundless love urged Him on to endure all these pains. For love is the measure of pain, and we cannot live in love without pain. Hence it is said of Christ, “Dost thou not see His love, sculpted in every limb?”

“AND PLATTING A CROWN OF THORNS…”
“And platting a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand. And bowing the knee before him, they mocked him, saying: Hail, king of the Jews.” (Saint Matthew 27:29). 
To insult and to torment Christ, as the supposed king of the Jews, He was crowned with thorns by the wantonness of the soldiers, with Pilate not commanding but permitting it, so that by presenting Christ, completely marred in appearance, to the Jews he might more easily arouse their pity and deliver Him from death. Toletus, Pererius and others think that these thorns were those of the sea-rush, which has very long, very sharp thorns; Baronius, however, disputes this. Bellonius and Gretser (citing him in lib. 1 de Cruce cap. 12), contend that they were from the blackthorn. 
Perhaps the thorns of the sea-rush were intertwined with blackthorn in the crown. In Rome I have seen two thorns from Christ’s crown of thorns, which St. Helena brought from Jerusalem to Rome and placed in the Basilica of Santa Croce; they are as long and sharp as thick needles. 
St. Bridget (lib. 1 Revel. cap.10) writes that it was revealed to her that this crown was placed a second time on Christ’s head when on the cross; that it came down to the middle of His forehead, and that so much blood flowed from the puncture wounds as to fill His eyes and ears, and He could not see His Mother, unless He compressed His eyelids to squeeze the blood from His eyes. All pictures of Christ represent Him as crucified with the crown of thorns, as Origen and Tertullian (lib. Contra Judaeos cap. 13) distinctly assert. Saint Matthew implies in chapter 27 that He was.
Christ was cruelly mistreated, in that they ridiculed Him as a mock king with a crown of thorns, which was extremely painful, for the thorns were very sharp, and also driven into the head and brain, wherein is the font and origin of all the nerves, muscles, faculties and senses. 
Therefore, that is the seat of awareness and of the sense of touch, and so pain and pricks, even very light and superficial ones, are felt there acutely. From the brain originate the seven συζυγίαι of the nerves, i.e., the seven bands or cords which spread throughout the body, so that it can feel and move itself; thus, citing Galenus, Andreas Vesalius (Anatomicorum princeps lib. 4, de Humani corporis fabrica cap. 1 et seq.), where he also teaches that the nerves are the instrument of the sense of touch; this is why the brain is the principle of the will to perceive or to move, the seat of reason, the ruler of the members and the entrails, and, therefore, located at the highest point of the body. See the same author (lib. 7 cap. 4).
ST. BRIDGET’S DESCRIPTION
But listen to Saint Bridget of Sweden describing in a few words the bitterness of Christ’s crowning, from a revelation of the Blessed Virgin (lib. 1 Revel. cap. 10): “After that, they contrived a crown of thorns for His head, which pricked the venerable head of my Son so severely, that the blood which flowed filled His eyes and obstructed His ears, and His beard was completely fouled with the blood running down.” 
And in Book 4, chapter 70: “The crown of thorns embraced His head most tightly, and came down as low as the middle of the forehead. So many streams of blood rushing down from the sharp points over His face, and filling His hair and eyes and beard, He seemed to be nothing but one mass of blood. Nor could He see me standing by the cross, unless He squeezed out the blood by compressing His eyelids.”
LITERAL REASON
The literal reason for this crown of thorns was so that the soldiers might insult and torture Christ for pretending to be king of the Jews. For this crown lacerated and disfigured Christ’s brows, says Tertullian (lib. 4 Contra Marc.). As St. Bernard says (tractat. de passione Dom.), “It pricked all over His most fair head with a thousand wounds.” 
MYSTICAL REASON
But Origen gives the moral and mystical reason. “In this crown the Lord took on Himself the thorns of our sins woven together on His head.” For Saint Hilary says, “the sting of sin is in the thorns of which Christ’s victorious crown is woven.” 
But listen to Tertullian (lib. de Corona militis sub finem), “Let me ask you, what garland did Jesus wear for both genders? Of thorns, I think, and briars, as a figure of those sins which the earth of our flesh hath brought forth unto us, but which the virtue of the cross hath taken away, crushing (as it did) all the stings of death by the sufferings of the head of the Lord. For besides the figurative meaning there is assuredly the contumely, disgrace, and dishonor, and, blended with them, the cruelty, which thus both defiled and wounded the Lord’s brows.”
TROPOLOGICAL REASON
Tropologically, these thorns teach us to prick and subdue the flesh with fastings, haircloths, and disciplines. “For it is not fitting that the members of a thorn-crowned Head should be delicate,” says Saint Bernard. 
Hence Tertullian (op. cit., cap. 14) teaches us that Christians of old, out of reverence for Christ’s crown of thorns, did not wear crowns plaited from flowers, as the heathen did. 
Christ offered Saint Catherine of Siena two crowns, one of jewels, the other of thorns, giving her the option to choose which one she preferred, on the condition that if she chose one of them in this life, she should wear the other in the next. She seized at once the crown of thorns from His hand, and fixed it so firmly on her head that she felt pain for many days, and now she has received a jewelled crown in heaven. 
St. Agapitus the martyr, a youth of only fifteen, when live coals were put on his head, recalled Christ’s crown of thorns and said exultantly, “It is a small matter that that head which is to be crowned in heaven should be burned on earth. How elegantly a crown of glory shall adorn a head afflicted for Christ!” Think, then, when enduring any kind of headache, distress, colds, annoyances, temptations, or tribulations, that Christ is giving thee one of the thorns from His crown.
ANALOGICAL REASON
Analogically, Saint Ambrose (in cap 22. Lucae) says, “The crown of thorns placed on Christ’s head shows that triumphant glory should be won for God from sinners of this world, as if from the thorns of this life.”
SYMBOLICAL REASON
Symbolically, Saint Bernard (de passione Domini cap. 19) says, “Though they crown Him in derision, yet in their ignorant mockery they confess Him to be a crowned king. Therefore, is He proved to be a king by those who knew Him not.”
And Saint Augustine (tract. 116 in Joan.) says, “Thus did the kingdom which was not of this world overcome the proud world, not with fierce fighting, but lowly suffering. [Jesus comes forth] wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, not resplendent in power, but overwhelmed with reproach.” 
Again, “The color purple,” says Elias Cratensis (ad orationem 3, Nazianz. in Julianum), “exhorts good rulers to be ready to shed their blood for the safety of their subjects,” as Christ shed His. Hence the purple is given to cardinals by the pope to admonish them to shed their blood when necessary for the Church. 
On this subject St. Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople says (orat. in sepult. Christi), “The purple robe and the crown of thorns woven before His crucifixion assured the victory of Him who said, Have confidence, I have overcome the world.
[Pseudo-]Athanasius (serm. de Cruce et passione) strikingly says, “When the Lord was stripped and arrayed in the purple, there was raised invisibly a trophy over the devil. It was a strange and incredible marvel, and doubtless a token of great victory, that they placed the ornaments of triumph – a scarlet cloak and a crown of thorns—on Him whom they had struck in mockery and derision. He went forth to death in this sort of array, in order to show that the victory was won expressly for our salvation.” In the same work St. Athanasius points out that Christ was crowned with thorns to restore to us the tree of life, and to heal our “thorns” [cf. Matth. 13:7], that is, worldly cares and anxieties by taking them on Himself.
For this reason, Godfrey of Bouillon, when the Christians captured Jerusalem and he was made the first Christian king of the city, refused to be crowned with a royal crown, saying, “It is unfitting for a Christian king to wear a crown of gold in the very city in which Christ wore one of thorns” (cf. Wilhelmus Tyrius et al.).
The tonsure of priests and monks, which they wear upon their heads instead of a crown, represents Christ’s crown of thorns and is a token of their humility and contempt of the world. Thus, SS. Bede (lib. 5 Histor. Angl. cap. 22) and Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople (in Theoria rerum Ecclesiasticarum).
ANAGOGICAL REASON
Anagogically, Tertullian (de Corona mil. cap. 14) says, put on Christ’s crown of thorns, “that so thou mayest rival that crown which afterward was His, for it was after the gall that He tasted the honey; nor was He saluted as king by the heavenly hosts till He had been written up upon the cross as the king of the Jews. Being made by the Father a little lower than the angels, He was afterward crowned with glory and honor.” 
“With thorns,” says St. Jerome, “Christ was crowned that He might win for us a royal diadem.”
“AND A REED IN HIS RIGHT HAND”
This, which represented Christ’s scepter as king of the Jews, was a fragile, worthless, mean, and ridiculous thing. What kind of reed this was is described by Laevinua Lemnius (de Herbis Biblicis cap. 27). “There are several different kinds of reeds: one is of a perfectly polished smoothness, without knots and having no divisions, articulations, or joints, which is called typha palustris; this sort was placed in Christ’s hand instead of a royal scepter when He was mocked as a king. This stem has the form of a royal or imperial scepter; its tip is almost two palms [8 in., 20 cm.] in height, and densely tufted—covered with heavy, thick down which, if you were to stroke it with your hand or fingers, you would think that you were touching some silky or shaggy tail; after a few days, though, it dissolves into particles and the down thins out and disappears.” 
Again, Tertullian (lib. de Corona militis cap. 14) says, “The strength of Christ removes all the stings of death, blunting them by the suffering of the Lord’s head.”
SYMBOLICAL REASON
Symbolically, St. Jerome and [Pseudo-] Athanasius (serm. de Cruce) say, as the reed drives away and kills serpents, so does Christ venomous lusts. 
Hear St. Jerome: “As Caiphas, not knowing what he said, declared that it was better for one man to die for all, so they too, though acting with another intent, yet furnished us believers with mysteries (sacramenta). In the scarlet robe He bears on Him the blood-stained deeds of the gentiles; in the crown of thorns, He does away with the ancient curse; with the reed He destroys poisonous animals, or [in another sense] He holds in His hand the reed to record the sacrilege of the Jews.” 
St. Ambrose, too, (in cap. 22 Lucae) says, “The reed is held in Christ’s hand that human weakness should no more be moved as a reed with the wind, but be strengthened and made firm by the works of Christ; or, as St. Mark says, it strikes His head so that our nature, strengthened by contact with His Godhead, might waver no more.”
“THEY MOCKED HIM”
“And bowing the knee before him, they mocked him, saying: Hail (in Greek χαῖρε, i.e., rejoice, hail!; Syriac, “peace be with thee”), king of the Jews.”
Note here that the soldiers mock Christ as though they are at the inauguration of a king in full regalia. 
First, they gather the entire cohort, as though surrounding Him with an army of attendants. Bringing together the whole band as an attendant army. 
Second, His throne was a stone or stool, raised up like a tribunal, as Clement of Alexandria declares (lib. 2 Paedag. cap. 8), with others. 
Third, His royal crown was of thorns. 
Fourth, His robe was a scarlet chlamys. 
Fifth, His scepter was a reed. 
Sixth, in the place of the people’s applause and reverence were the mock genuflections and salutations of the soldiers, the spittings, the blows, and the stripes. 
All these did Christ bear with divine humility and patience, and thus deserved that “In the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth and under the earth: and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.” (Phil. 2:10-11).
TROPOLOGICAL REASON
Tropologically, Christ here wished: 

  1. To give us an idea of the vanity and affliction of all earthly kingdoms and honors, and of all kings and rulers. 
  2. To turn these insults into the weapons of His victory, and especially to overcome the pride of Lucifer by His humility. 
  3. To teach that worldly kingdoms are found in honors, pomps and delights, but that His consists of contempt of honors, pleasures, and self.
    “AND SPITTING UPON HIM…”
    “And spitting upon him, they took the reed and struck his head.” As a fool, says St. Thomas, who foolishly aspired to be king of Judea; also to drive the crown of thorns deeper and more firmly into His head. These grossest insults and most cruel pains were devised and suggested, not so much by men as by devils, says Origen. 
    “Not one member only, but the whole body suffered these atrocious injuries,” says St. Chrysostom. “His head [was afflicted] by the crown; His fist by the reed; His face by the spitting; His cheeks by the buffets; the rest of His body by the scourges, the nakedness, the putting on of the chlamys and the pretended reverence; His hand, by the reed that they gave Him to hold as a scepter; also His mouth and tongue by the drink of vinegar and gall.”
    CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER OF EVENTS
    Here we should interpolate, so as to arrange the events in chronological order, the things that Saint Matthew does not mention but which Saint John supplies in chapter 19 (vv. 1-16). Christ, thus scourged, crowned with thorns and wearing a chlamys, was brought forth by Pilate and displayed to the Jews, saying, Behold the man, to excite their compassion; but the Jews, even more enraged at Him, obstinately demanded, Crucify, crucify him, because He made Himself the Son of God. 

Pilate on hearing this, and fearing that Jesus might be the son of Jove, Hercules or some other god who might avenge His death, asked Jesus, Whence art thou? When Jesus gave no answer, Pilate added that he had power to put Him to death. Christ replied, Thou shouldst not have any power against me, unless it were given thee from above.” “Power” here means “the ability, permission and the means to kill me”; for to Pilate had been given by God power, i.e., authority and jurisdiction over the other Jews, but over Christ he had only a permissive authority. For Christ as a man, since He was the Son of God, was not subject to any human power; indeed, He is the king and Lord of all. 

Pilate, then, in judging and condemning Christ here, sinned in a three-fold way: first, by usurping an authority and jurisdiction over Christ which he really had not; second, in perverting the order of judges, since he yielded to the clamor of the Jews and condemned Christ, not for a crime, but for the sake of the crowd; and third, by condemning Christ, an innocent man, so as not to be thought an enemy of Cæsar, as Saint John adds.
May these holy commentaries concerning Our Lord’s great sufferings during His Sacred Passion assist us in our Lenten meditations!

AVE  MARIA!

Father Joseph Poisson

Consecration of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel to Immaculate Heart of Mary
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Given By His Excellency Bishop Pfeiffer

Consecration of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel to Immaculate Heart of Mary
http://ourladyofmountcarmelusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Consecration-to-Immaculate-Heart-by-Our-Lady-of-Mt.-Carmel-SSPX-Marian-Corps.pdf

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