The Scourging at the Pillar

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Like none of the other moments of Christ’s passion, the scourging at the pillar highlights His 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. 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. He wanted to show us how to make something good out of our pain as well

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Counterbalancing Sinful Physical Pleasure

Physical pain isn’t the only kind of suffering, it’s not even the most brutal kind of suffering. But pain in our flesh, animal pain, is the most vivid, dramatic pain we experience. As such it has certain benefits that no other suffering can offer us.

The most notable benefit of physical pain is the way it offers a counterbalance to our tendency to sinfully indulge our bodies. This is why, traditionally, Christ’s scourging has been seen by the saints as making up for our sins of lust. He embraced physical pain to atone for all the time we have pursued selfish physical pleasure

And it’s not just sexual pleasure. There are so many times we put our body’s enjoyment over the goods of the soul. When we eat glutinously, without gratitude or temperance, when we’re picky or impatient about what we eat, when we push away food others have prepared for us, when we sleep too long instead of getting up to pray, or getting up to help our spouse with the kids. Physical pain is our chance to remember those moments of selfishness and atone for them.

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Physical pain also keeps us from getting too used to this life

We were not made for this world permanently but we always try to make a treaty with this world. We try to maximize our comfort here, settle down and settle in. Even though our soul knows it was made for more, when we surround ourselves with physical comfort we can sometimes be lulled into the false sense that we could “make do” with this life. Physical pain wakes us up.

As CS Lewis says, “Pain is God’s megaphone to wake a sleeping world.”

In the case of physical pain, we can’t delude ourselves anymore. We remember, we instinctively turn to God and refocus on the transitoriness of this life.

So physical pain is also our chance to refocus on the next life.

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Making up what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings

St. Paul is the one who explicitly tells us that we can use our pain, like Jesus used His, to help others.

He said, “I rejoice in my sufferings, and in my flesh I make up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of His body which is the Church.” (Colossians 1:24).

And notice how he said, “in my flesh.” Sometimes it’s harder to offer up our mental or emotional suffering, especially since so much of suffering can be caught up in our own vices.

For instance, resentment and envy and wounded vanity and financial anxiety are real forms of suffering, but they’re hard to untangle from the sinful attitudes that cause them.

By contrast, physical pain is usually more pure. It’s not normally connected to any obvious fault of ours and so it’s a simpler matter to just offer it to Jesus and ask Him to use it to help someone in need.

So physical pain is also our chance to unite with Christ’s sufferings in saving souls.

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The Letter to the Hebrews quotes the wisdom of the Old Testament and reminds us “God disciplines every son He loves, and He scourges every son He acknowledges.”

This was surely true of His own Son, his Beloved Son, tied up to a pillar and scourged within an inch of His life.

When speaking of the Christ, the prophet Isaiah wrote, “it was the Lord’s will to crush him with pain.”

Obviously God didn’t whip Jesus Himself, but He allowed the scourging to happen, so that His Son might be heroically glorified, and humanity might be saved.

So too with us. God wills to scourge us as true sons, to crush us with pain. That means that He allows us to suffer physical pain so that we can regain mastery over our bodies after our sinful self-indulgence, reorient our minds towards the next life, assist in the salvation of souls, the building up of the Church and receive a crown of glory with Christ for all eternity.