Sorrowful Mysteries

One

Mental Suffering: The Agony in the Garden 

One of the greatest dilemmas in human experience is the problem of suffering. There is just so much suffering and so much of it seems pointless, ugly, brutal. Where did this suffering come from? What can we do about it? 

In the sorrowful mysteries, we remember where all suffering came from. It came from our sin. And we remember Christ’s love for us, how to take away the sin we had caused, He took upon Himself all the suffering for our sins. But we remember a third thing too: we remember that just as Christ’s suffering was redemptive, was salvific, so can ours be when we unite it to His. As Paul said, “I rejoice in my sufferings… and I make up what is lacking in the suffering of Christ for the sake of His body, which is the Church.” (Col. 1:24) 

Christ has turned suffering from a senseless, meaningless thing into the primary means of personal sanctification and redemption of others. And that begins with mental suffering. In the agony in the Garden, Christ was anxious. He was sorrowful unto death. He sweat blood in a kind of nervous breakdown.  And in so doing, He made all that suffering (depression, anxiety, panic), he made it all an opportunity to draw closer to Him and to save souls. If we suffer from one of these issues, remember that suffering is power, which, if we unite it with Christ, can help redeem the world. 

Two

Physical Suffering: The Scourging at the Pillar 

Although Christ suffered all kinds of physical pain during His passion, the scourging at the pillar was about pure physical pain. Yes, He had physical pain during nearly all the other sorrowful mysteries, but in those cases, the pain was a byproduct of something else going on. He sweat blood in Gethsemane as a byproduct of his fear. The thorns that pierced His head were a byproduct of His humiliation. The weariness on the road to Calvary was a byproduct of having been given the job of transporting His own cross. And even the pain of the crucifixion itself was a result of carrying out the Roman procedure for execution.

But with the scourging of the pillar, nothing else was happening. Nothing else was going on. The whole event was simply about the pure, physical pain. Pain was the point of the whipping. They did it just to hurt Him. And if He accepted that beating, that pointless, gratuitous, sadistic beating, it must have been because He was able to make something out of the pain, something good. And because He wanted to show us how to make something good out of our pain as well.

Physical pain is the most basic pain we know. It’s the most basic way we can discipline our attachment to comfort. It’s the most basic way we can make up for our sins of the flesh. And it’s the pain that’s usually most innocent, and so most easily united to the suffering of the innocent Christ. Whatever physical sickness or chronic pain is going on in your life, or even if you occasionally stub your toe or hit your head on the cabinet door, don’t forget to offer it up to Christ. Don’t miss the opportunity to be united with Christ scourged at the pillar. 

Three

Humiliation/Embarrassment: The Crowning of Thorns 

The crowning of thorns signifies perhaps the supreme moment of God’s humility. Because it’s always easier to humble yourself than it is to have other people belittle you. God became man. God became the Son of a poor carpenter. God became a homeless wanderer. God even became sacrament under the humiliating disguise of bread and wine. God’s self-initiated humility is simply staggering. But in this mystery, God’s humiliation becomes almost more than we can bear. 

Because in this mystery, God is spat on. God is crowned with thorns and robed with purple to make Him look ridiculous. God is hit with a stick and then asked, “Who hit him?”  Like a mix of demons and nasty children, the Romans do anything they can think of to rob Christ of His dignity. And that suffering, that loss of dignity, is holy. 

Ours can be too, if we unite it to Christ. Any insult. Any time we feel disrespected. Any time we feel passed over, ignored, or deliberately insulted. That suffering has power. The power that comes from union with the Lord, crowned with thorns. 

Four

Exhaustion: The Carrying of the Cross 

Have you ever been in a difficult situation – like, say, all the kids get sick at once, or there’s a crisis at work, and initially, your adrenaline kicks in, and you think, “You know what, I can do this! We’ll get through this!”  And for a while, you feel like you’re doing okay. But then when the difficulty drags on… and on and on and on… You start to say, “Wait, no, I can’t keep this up.” 

That’s the pain of exhaustion, the fatigue that piles on top of suffering to make it feel unbearable. That’s the pain Christ experienced when sleepless, humiliated, whipped, cross-examined, betrayed, and a head full of thorn punctures. With all that, they put a huge piece of wood on top of him and said, “Carry that up the hill.” 

And He did. That’s the amazing thing. He did it. He fell a couple of times, and He wasn’t ashamed to accept Simon of Cyrene’s help. But He suffered and persevered despite His exhaustion. 

Not because He had to. He was God. He didn’t have to do anything. But because exhaustion is one of the holiest kinds of pain. It’s a suffering that goes down into the roots of our soul and purifies it of anything other than God we’ve been storing in reserve. If God sends you exhausting challenges sometimes, then good. He did the same to His beloved Son. And it’s how He will conform us to Jesus.  

Five

Spiritual Desolation: The Crucifixion 

It’s from the Cross, it’s during this last, most sorrowful mystery that Christ displays the most unexpected kind of sorrow, the last kind of suffering we would expect Him to experience. He cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 

This is the suffering of feeling far from God. It’s the pain and sorrow that cause the sinner to repent. It’s the pain and sorrow that causes the contemplative Christian to renew their commitment to God, and to His will instead of to their own self-assurance. This kind of suffering, which Christ Himself made holy from the cross, can be the ultimate prompt to our perfection. It’s God’s hiddenness that gives us the opportunity of heroism, of selfless love. 

When God feels present, we know we can’t lose. When God feels absent, everything feels hopeless. But if we turn to the Lord, if we obey the Lord, if we strive still to be faithful to prayer and to the demands of our state-in-life, then our suffering is at its holiest and most powerful. Then we are very close to the resurrection. Then we are very close to glory.