Sorrowful Mysteries

 The three apostles sleep in the foreground of this artwork depicting Christ's Agony in the Garden.  The suffering Christ kneels in prayer in the garden of Gesthemene, while an angel hovers in the air, in a circle of light, holding a chalice and a cross.  A band of soldiers with torches and clubs, led by Judas Iscariot, approaches from behind the Savior. 

"Then Pilate took Jesus and scourged him. And the soldiers plaited a crown of thorns, and put it on his head, and arrayed him in a purple robe; they came up to him, saying, 'Hail, King of the Jews!' and struck him with their hands" (Jn 19:1-3).

"Jesus' sufferings took their historical, concrete form from the fact that he was 'rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes' (Mk 8:31 ), who 'handed him to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified' (Mt 20:19)" (CCC, 572). 

 And platting a crown of thorns, they put it upon His head. It was a good reflection of the devout Lanspergius, that this torture of the crown of thorns was one most full of pain; inasmuch as they everywhere pierced into the sacred head of the Lord, the most sensitive part, it being from the head that all the nerves and sensations of the body diverge; while it was also that torture of his Passion which lasted the longest, as Jesus suffered from the thorns up to his death, remaining, as they did, fixed in his head. Every time that the thorns on his head were touched, the anguish was renewed afresh. And the common opinion of authors agrees with that of St. Vincent Ferrer, that the crown was intertwined with several branches of thorns, and fashioned like a helmet or hat, so that it fitted upon the whole of the head, down to the middle of the forehead; according to the revelation made to St. Bridget: ” The crown of thorns embraced his head most tightly, and came down as low as the middle of the forehead.” 

"And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means the place of a skull)" (Mk 15:21-22).

"By accepting in his human will that the Father's will be done, he accepts his death as redemptive, for 'he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree' (1 Pt 2:24)" (CCC, 612).

 There is a time and place for everything in God’s plan, and every debt in the universe needs to be settled eventually. This was the day, Calvary was the place, two thousand years ago was the time, that God decided to settled our debts.