By His Stripes

By His Stripes We Are Healed

(Isaiah 53: 5) 

There is a statue of the Scourged Christ that is, oddly, placed in the dining room of the offices of St. Mary Catholic Church in Schwenksville, Pennsylvania. I say “oddly” because its gruesome appearance in a room where people eat would seem to cause one to lose his or her appetite. I saw it for the first time when attending a meeting with the parish men’s Bible study, and several weeks later, asked to visit it again. After that visit, I suggested to our pastor that it be on display in the Church during Lent. He already had planned to have it at the foot of the altar on Good Friday, the perfect time!!

Why, you may wonder, am I writing about this? It is an image that is difficult to forget. I had seen such an image of Christ only once before, on a Crucifix in the Chapel at the Augustine Institute in Denver, Colorado, only a year or so before seeing this one. And, for years now, the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary have become favorites of mine because they remind me of all Jesus did for us sinful men. Beyond that, I have spent a lot of time considering what Mary, His mother, must have felt as she saw her son during His Passion and death.

 It is her reaction to the scourging that prompted me to write about it. Mary was likely the most familiar of women with the Scriptures, and with the verse used to entitle this piece. It is my sincere conviction that though she did not know in advance what the suffering prophesied by Simeon would entail, she did clearly recognize it as the fulfillment of Scripture as it occurred. So, given her understanding of God’s Word, what an odd mixture of feelings she must have experienced!

 Intense emotional and physical pain. Yes, her pain was physical as well as emotional. She and her son had been ‘one’ since the moment of His conception. Every wound on His body caused her pain on some level. And it is in that sense that the Church considers her to be ‘co-redemptrix’ with Him. Her suffering, though not visible like His, was as intense. It was also redemptive. At the Annunciation thirty-three years before, she accepted the role of Mother of God’s Son, knowing full well the consequences that could follow an unwed pregnancy in that day. Anyone who knows anything about motherhood knows how intensely mothers feel the pain their children experience. Mary, the ‘perfect mother’ in every sense, felt her son’s pain all the more intensely because of her perfect, completely selfless love for her son.

Because she was herself ‘perfect’ from the moment of her conception, her love for her fellow man was also perfect in every sense. So, instead of feeling anger toward those who rejected her son and His message, she instead felt sorrow and compassion, just as Jesus Himself did. Her prayer at that time must have been multifaceted, just as her emotions were complex. That is to say, as much as she prayed for an end to the suffering her son was experiencing, she was also praying for all of mankind, including both those who believed in and followed Him AND those who were torturing and taunting Him. And I am reminded of Jesus words to his mother as he carried his cross to Calvary in the Mel Gibson film "The Passion of the Christ: "See, Mother, I make all things new!"

Pain … and sorrow … and joy! Joy? Yes, I believe that the familiarity with Scripture noted above, also left Mary feeling Joy because of the redemptive power contained in her son’s excruciatingly painful death. The prophets had written of a suffering messiah, one who would bear the sins of the people upon Himself. Each Passover that had been celebrated since the first born sons among the Hebrew nation had been spared, and the people allowed to depart from Egypt had been but a foretaste of this one. She knew that it was no mere ‘coincidence’ that He suffered and died on that particular Passover. She also understood that she herself had started Him on the road to Calvary when she asked him to come to the rescue of the newly married couple in Cana just three years earlier. After all, thirty is ten times a trinity, and thirty-three is a trinity repeated.

 And, most of all, she understood that that wedding feast was but a foretaste of Wedding of the Lamb, which Jesus started the night before, and finished on the Third Day.