Section 20
Most gentle Jesus, King most admirable, Crown of confessors, Strength of the Church Militant, Delight of the Church Triumphant, and Model of all who follow you, how shamefully you were treated, how cruelly tortured! While many a blow was outwardly delivered, you experienced great inward distress, and all this for my sake—to save me from eternal punishment in hell, to cleanse my heart from its vicious habits, and to crown me in heaven with undying glory and honor.
I praise and honor you for the unbecoming welcome and feigned veneration given you, when those ministers of cruelty knelt down before you and violently slapped your face. With contempt did they worship you and with blasphemous tongue did they call you king, crying out: Hail, King of the Jews.1
Mortal man and servant of sin, consider how much disrespect and anguish the only-begotten Son of the Eternal Father has undergone for you. Open the ears of your mind, and on hearing Pilate’s harsh cry Behold the man!2 give way to devout sighs and tears. If you have any feelings of piety within you, let your whole being groan and weep in union with the Creator of the universe.
I praise and bless you, most honored Jesus, for the appalling mockery you endured, when, in order to increase your shame, they put a fragile reed into your right hand as a royal scepter—as if you had rashly taken the royal dignity unto yourself.
I praise and exalt you for the violent strokes given your wounded head, when those savage and merciless men, with reed staffs raised on high, fearlessly and frequently struck you on the crown of your head. Once again they spat foul saliva from their mouths and stuck out their vile tongues at you.
Daughters of Jerusalem, come forth and see King Solomon wearing the crown with which his mother, the Synagogue of the Jews, had crowned him on the day of his Passion.3 Amid what great abuse and insults was he led outside at Pilate’s command, so that his wretched appearance could be seen by everyone. In all truth, this is so sad a sight that the thought of it evokes great sorrow. Devout love responds with compassion. The meek and patient Jesus, clad in a purple robe and wearing the crown of thorns on his head, is led from the place of judgment. Perhaps the people, now mad with frenzy, will be somewhat moved to compassion when they see him so dishonored and afflicted. Alas, the crowd’s raging fury becomes more intense and when the governor cries out, Behold the man! they shout back still more shockingly: Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!4
Faithful lover of Jesus, having heard and taken all this to heart, tremble and blanch at the enormity of his sorrows. Strike your breast, shed your tears, and kneel down at the sight of the crowned Jesus, dressed as a king but in truth filled with shame as the most despicable of slaves. He endured the horror of these wretched punishments to draw you from all desire for worldly glory and to extinguish in you the disease of pride.
You, who are but the slime of the earth, ought to be ashamed to hanker after worldly glory, when you see your Lord’s most noble head so disgraced. As a member of that thorn-crowned head, you ought to be stricken with grief when you see him, who is of supreme majesty, preferring what is lowly and painful. Do not desire to seek an easier way of life, rather, with fervor follow the more austere way.
All you sons of pride, who strive for higher places and carry your heads on high in your desire to appear better than others, be engulfed in shame because you are much worse. Blush in embarrassment, you who go parading in the presence of the scourged and thorn-crowned Jesus, arrayed as you are in silks and precious stones, with your bodies, which are soon to die, bedecked with gold and silver jewelry, and your heads handsomely and ostentatiously attired. At the same time you give no thought to the work of your redemption nor to the fact that you were redeemed by such dire suffering.
Take comfort, take comfort, poor ulcer-covered Lazarus, and you, whoever you may be, who according to this world’s standards are considered worthless, for despite your infirmities and shortcomings you bear a greater resemblance to Jesus of Nazareth than does the rich man, who, arrayed in purple and fine linen, continues in his evil ways.
And you, cowled monk,5 do not be ashamed if the habit you wear is of coarse cloth and patched, because then—if you are shabbily dressed, but handsomely clothed in holiness—you will have special glory before God and his angels. May great shame be yours, O monk, if you should desire a habit made of finer cloth. You ought to be dead to the world and, furthermore, you have chosen to practice poverty in all its ways.
A religious may become downcast because of his afflictions, but if he frequently meditates on Jesus’ most cruel crowning he is certain to find true and comforting solace. If you find yourself filled with anxiety, recall the many thorns that Jesus endured, and you will—and with greater calm—bear whatever annoyances may come from others, even severe headaches, and what is usually the most troublesome, the sharp thorns of calumny and slander.
It is to your greater advantage to suffer with the suffering Jesus and to wear a crown of thorns with the crowned Jesus, as you now endure many nuisances on this earth of ours. However, if you live solely according to your own desires, you will later have to suffer hell’s punishments as well as the most acute torment of the damned, namely, to be eternally separated from the adorable face of Jesus, our Savior, and to be excluded from the delightful company of the blessed. He who is not ashamed to have a share in his reproaches and the sufferings he endured in his Passion, will, at the time of the dreadful Judgment, stand fearlessly and joyfully before his Eternal King.
How pleasing and dear to God is that soul, and how fruitful will his meditations be, in which he inwardly suffers the pains of Jesus’ Passion, is wounded to the heart by his wounds, and by reflecting on his death experiences a love-death with him.
Good Jesus, ever meek and patient, I lament over you, so severely scourged, so disgracefully mocked, and most barbarously crowned for me. That I may grieve still more deeply, I ask for the grace of a sorrow that penetrates my entire being.
I humbly prostrate myself before you and adore your exalted majesty, so contemptuously treated in your human nature. With lips dedicated to your praise, I heartily beseech you to imprint clearly and stamp indelibly on my heart that mournful countenance that was yours at the hour when everyone rejected you as a loathsome leper, and you, wearing a crown of thorns, were hurriedly led outside as a spectacle to the waiting crowd.
May this most sorrowful image of you penetrate the innermost areas of my heart and may it so afflict and distress me that all that is worldly and curious disappear before my eyes and that all that is carnal and lustful perish within me. May all that is bitter and vile become sweet and pleasing because of you, and may the contemplation of your sufferings stamp out my evil inclinations and the thought of your heavy sorrow allay my daily anxieties.
May this holy image of your crowning, earnestly and profoundly meditated upon, be a great comfort to me in time of adversity and may it strengthen me against the mind’s lustful wanderings. When a person’s mind is occupied with divine realities and is given to penitential practices, he is both free of all harmful thoughts and is protected from the enemy’s piercing shafts.
Cleanse me, Lord Jesus, from the contagion of material possessions. Clothe me with true virtue and grant me to rejoice when I meet with contempt. When I find myself deprived of necessities, may I bear this with meekness, and when old garments are given me rather than new or when something shabby is offered me rather than something of quality, let me not be offended. Let me not complain about those who laugh at me, or argue with those who reproach me, but by my remembering your crown of thorns may I calmly accept, for the sake of my salvation, whatever pain and affliction may come my way.
Finally, pierce my hard heart with the sharpest thorn in your head and embed it in my heart’s very center so that all my body’s noxious blood may flow out through the wound it makes, and may that goad of your holy love remain fixed therein until I am fully purged from the thorns of vice and thistles of temptation and have prepared myself to become the seedbed of virtue. Then may the soil of my heart, once infected as a result of the primal curse, receive a new blessing by the infusion of your sacred blood, and may there bloom the rose of charity rather than the thorn of envy, the lily of chastity rather than the nettles of lust, the violet of humility rather than the burr of vanity, and the blossom of gentleness rather than the bramble of impatience.