The Love Language of the Sorrowful Mysteries

THE LOVE LANGUAGE OF THE SORROWFUL MYSTERIES

By Virginia Hodal

                 One of the greatest gifts I have ever received is a book entitled “The Five Love Languages” written by Gary Chapman.  If you have not read this book get it now!  It will help you to navigate all the relationships in your life. 

Not married?  No Kids?  You still have a job, a boss, co-workers, possibly a neighbor.  It is an excellent tool for understanding and getting along with others and will give immeasurable help to everyone who reads it.

         To clarify the love languages, they consist of physical affection, words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, and acts of services.  When we speak these “languages” we are making those around us feel loved.

         Since Jesus is the fountain of all Love, the Gospels are full of a myriad of examples where He spoke to us using these languages of love.  He uses physical touch and words when He performs His many miracles, which in and of themselves are wonderful acts of service.  He uses quality time whenever He teaches the crowds, and by feeding the five thousand, He is using gifts, although His greatest gift is of Himself in the Holy Eucharist. 

His mightiest example of the infinite depth of his love is played out in His Passion where he exhibits all of these gifts together.

QUALITY TIME

         In the First Sorrowful Mystery, we see Jesus in the Garden of Olives praying.  He has just instituted the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist and is now going through the calm before the storm of his Passion and Death by crucifixion.

         He knows what he will soon endure and that is constant, excruciating pain of mind, body and soul.  He has asked his apostles, who are His closest and most precious friends in the whole world, to watch and pray with him.

They, of course, are willing but their flesh is weak and they fall asleep.  Not just once, but three times they will slumber while Jesus suffers alone. 

         Jesus’ agony is so intense that He asks God the Father to “let this cup pass.”  He begins to sweat blood, a condition where extreme stress causes the capillaries that feed the sweat glands to rupture and bleed.  As a result, His skin becomes tender, more fragile.     

         The weakness of His human friends has denied Him the “quality time” He so badly needs, however, God the Father has provided the necessary “quality time” by sending an angel to strengthen Him that He may face the torment that will allow all of His children to enter into heaven if they choose to follow God’s laws.  So we are saved. 

         He is soon arrested and during the quiet of the night, dragged through the streets of Jerusalem to the Sanhedrin, to the Temple, to the court of King Herod, and back again.  The chief priests and Pharisees are looking to execute Him and finally, finding someone to give false testimony, they take him to the Procurator.  This leads to the Second Sorrowful Mystery.

PHYSICAL AFFECTION

         Pontius Pilate is not anxious to condemn Him and so has Jesus scourged.  A scourge is much more than a whip. It has three leather thongs, approximately three feet in length attached together at the end of a handle.  Each of these thongs has a number of ragged metal or bone pieces inserted into it.  Every stroke of a scourge is like three strokes with a whip, if that whip was designed to cut the criminal’s flesh into bloody ribbons. 

         Generally, when the Roman’s flogged a criminal who was to be crucified, they would stop the scourging just short of death.  That way, the criminal would not get out of suffering death by crucifixion and this is what happened in Jesus’ case.  The soldiers stopped his scourging before He could die.

We see in this mystery the extreme abuse of the love language of “Physical Affection.”

WORDS OF AFFIRMATION

After Jesus is dragged back to await another interview with Pilate, a sadistic game of blind man’s bluff ensues.  The waiting crowd, with the soldiers’ encouragement, drape Him in purple velvet and give him a common reed as a scepter to hold.  A crown is necessary and someone gets the fiendish idea to fashion one out of thorns. After all, heroes were crowned with wreathes of laurel.

This crown is forcibly jammed onto his head with the intent to inflict as much pain as possible.  Once He is blindfolded, they begin to taunt him.  When that becomes too mild of a pastime, they start to slap Him, spit on Him, and other horrors which I can’t bear to name.  They demand that He guess who has abused Him. 

They use every horrible, hideous, hateful word they can think of in order to torment Him.  Every word is designed to wound Jesus, making the Third Sorrowful Mystery one of “words of degradation” instead of “words of affirmation”.

Jesus is once again brought before the Procurator as a pitiful, bleeding wretch.  Pilate places him before the crowd, addressing them with “Ecce Homo;” Behold the man.  The crowd is unmoved and shouts “Crucify him, crucify him.”  Pilate decides not to save Jesus.  The exceedingly heavy cross is placed upon His stricken shoulders and two genuine criminals join Him on the journey to Mount Calvary in what we know as the Fourth Sorrowful Mystery.

ACTS OF SERVICE

As Jesus carries His cross in one final heroic “Act of Service,” paving stones cut into his feet.  The weight of His burden cuts into his shoulder and He falls a number of times with the cross knocking against his battered body or crushing the thorns against his wounded head.

His progress is slow and the Chief priests become fearful that He may die before He can be crucified.  A bystander by the name of Simon of Cyrene is forced, against his will, to help Jesus carry the cross.  Simon is long remembered in history for this loving act of service, as is Veronica, who braved the wrath of the soldiers, wiping the blood and sweat from Jesus’ ravaged face.

Jesus continues His arduous journey and ascends Mount Calvary, but not before consoling the group of sorrowing women who are crying for Him.

GIFTS

Once His service is over, He is brutally stripped of his garments, reopening all wounds that have coagulated.  He is forced down upon the cross where nails are driven painfully through His hands and feet.  The cross is then raised and dropped carelessly into the hole, causing intense agony by the jarring of His nail fastened wrists and feet while the cross settles into the opening. 

He is now raised above the crowd for all to see, His arms outstretched in love as He gives His life in the greatest gift of all; the Fifth Sorrowful Mystery.

Within this substantial gift, He gives several smaller gifts. To John, his steadfast apostle, He gives the gift of His mother thereby giving her to all of us, too.  To the “good” thief, who acknowledges His Godliness, He gives the gift of paradise.  Finally, to His tormentors, He gives the gift of forgiveness.  The value of all these gifts cannot be measured.

It can be argued that the worst of these sufferings were His abandonment in the garden just when He needed His friends most and the grueling, exhausting journey bearing the oppressive cross.

Jesus’ sufferings in the garden consisted of those of the mind.  Loneliness, abandonment, and dread in particular. 

Mother Theresa of Kolkata used to say that the sufferings of the afflicted people to which her sisters attended, were not those of sickness, starvation or homelessness, but rather the abandonment by their families and the loneliness they felt.  As for dread, any woman who has had children has an inkling of what that feels like as the day of her labor and delivery comes closer and closer. 

These feelings, while not physically painful, can be severely heavy and Jesus felt them deeply enough to sweat blood during His time in the garden.

On the other hand, His sufferings while carrying the cross, were physical.  He had already been beaten and pummeled until there wasn’t an inch of His skin left that wasn’t cut, bruised, scratched, or bleeding.  An ordinary man would have died.  Now, on top of all the deliberate mutilation that was done to Him, Jesus had to carry an exceedingly heavy cross for a considerable distance.  Every time He fell, the soldiers would apply the whips.

So then it can be said that Jesus’ worse sufferings during His passion were His abandonment in the garden, and His tremendous suffering while carrying His cross.   Quality time and Acts of Service.

And what does Jesus ask of His followers in order to get to heaven?  Faith and Good Works.  As we read in James 2:14, “Faith without works is dead.”

Faith which is displayed by quality time!  Time in prayer, at adoration, at Mass.  He wants us to have faith in Him, talk with Him, love Him above all else and to pray without ceasing so that we may help atone for his abandonment in the garden.

Lastly, to show that our Faith is not empty, we prove it by our good works.  Acts of service such as we provide for those in our families or at work; to those in need; the helpless, the poor, the uneducated, the sick, the incarcerated, the lonely; pretty much every one of God’s children.  Works which are also known as the corporeal and spiritual works of mercy.  These “Acts of Service,” help us to make-up for the sufferings that Jesus endured during His final great act of service.  For whatsoever we do to the least of our brothers, we do unto Him.