Scriptural Stations Meditations - Sixth Station

Jesus is Scourged and Crowned with Thorns

We adore You, O Christ, and we bless You.
Because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged.
And the soldiers wove a crown out of thorns
and placed it on his head,
and clothed him in a purple cloak,
and they came to him and said,
"Hail, King of the Jews!"
And they struck him repeatedly.

~John 19: 1-3

We pray:

Lord Jesus, this kind of cruelty is hard for us to imagine,
and yet many people in the world are suffering horribly and
being tortured at the hands of others even today.
Man’s inhumanity to man is ever-present in this world.
Your flesh, the flesh assumed by Divinity, is
torn violently and Your blood flows to the ground.
To mock You, the soldiers force a ridiculous crown onto Your head,
blinding You with pain.
Yet Your Heart sees clearly and continues to
reach beyond the taunts and jeers,
longing to gather all to the safety of love.
You endure this cruelty to show us the profoundest truth:
that God is not a God of power and wrath to be feared,
but that God is Love, and Love will give all and
suffer all things, even to death,
so that we can be free to love in return.

Lord, You are like a mother who longs to draw us all to Your Heart,
but we will not be gathered, running with false independence
toward an abyss we refuse to acknowledge.
Humanity’s distorted desire for power and freedom
has lead to the most hideous violence and injustice.
Give us the grace to see that only in You
can we find our true selves and be free.
Help us to understand that power is made perfect in weakness (Cor 12:9)
and that the realities of love are not manifest in bold displays of strength,
but deep within hearts eager to
pour themselves out – even in hiddenness – for others.

May the suffering and ridicule You endured for love of us
ignite deep within our hearts the willingness to suffer for love of one another and You.