18. THE LIFE OF JESUS: THE SECOND SORROWFUL MYSTERY - THE SCOURGING AT THE PILLAR

APPETIZER:  The Paschal mystery of Christ's cross and Resurrection stands at the center of the Good News that the apostles, and the Church following them, are to proclaim to the world. God's saving plan was accomplished "once for all" by the redemptive death of his Son Jesus Christ. The Church remains faithful to the interpretation of "all the Scriptures" that Jesus gave both before and after his Passover: Jesus' sufferings took their historical, concrete form from the fact that he was "rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes", who handed "him to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified". Faith can therefore try to examine the circumstances of Jesus' death illuminated by other sources, the better to understand the meaning of the Redemption. (CCC #571-573)

MAIN COURSE:  The Gospels tell us that at the Praetorium, Jesus was severely whipped (also called flogged or scourged).  The quote in the Appetizer above tell us that we can learn from other sources what this meant for Jesus.  So, let's do that for a moment.

Historical sources inform us that for scourging, a man was stripped of his clothing, and his hands were tied to an upright post. Then the Roman soldiers repeatedly struck the victim's back, buttocks and legs with full force. Iron balls on the whip would cause deep contusions, and cut into the skin and subcutaneous tissues. Pain and blood loss generally set the stage for shock. 

Medical experts have also studied the Passion. They concluded that the severe scourging, with its intense pain and extensive blood loss, left Jesus in a pre-shock state. The physical and mental abuse he endured - in addition to having food, water and sleep withheld from him, put Jesus into a most serious and most likely critical condition. 

While interesting professional studies give us a better appreciation of and insight into what Our Lord suffered in this Passion from historical and medical sources, they do not answer the bigger questions: Why? What Does This Mean? What Was it For?  This is where the reliable source of the Sacred Scriptures comes to our enlightenment. The Bible is not an infallible teacher of Roman torture techniques nor of medical pathological forensics, but it IS such a source, the primary source actually, for our understanding of religious Truth. And the fundamental religious truth that the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary help us to ponder is that of redemption (as the CCC Appetizer quote above calls it) or in more popular lingo, salvation.

And a good definition is salvation is this: being put back into a right relationship with God.  It begins with faith in Jesus Christ (God reaching out to us) and is made real in our lives by our reception of Baptism (Us reaching back out to God).  In other words, we Catholics believe that we have to DO something (receive baptism and then live it out in our lives) to cooperate with this grace from God.  This immediately puts the Catholic understanding of salvation at odds with the definition of it as typically used by our Protestant brothers and sisters. Now, BOTH Catholic and Protestant belief agrees that we humans are saved (that is, put back into this right relationship with God) by grace alone. And we both agree that grace is God's free generous merciful action towards us, reaching out to us out of love.  

But we differ significantly on how that is actualized in our lives. In popular Protestant Christianity salvation is said to be brought about by faith (trust) alone.  In other words, God reaches out and we just accept it.  This initial acceptance or consent on the part of the individual is all that is thought to be required. This viewpoint magnifies the truth that there is nothing we can do to earn salvation since it is a totally free undeserved gift. But then it kind of just abandons the lived reality of what happens after we first respond to this gift of grace. In other words, it says, "If I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and trust in him, I am saved and nothing more is necessary." This is why it is called "salvation by faith alone." 

The Catholic Christian understanding agrees 100% that salvation is a totally free gift.  But we say that "we are saved by grace alone, not by faith alone.” We don’t believe that faith alone saves us. Following Scripture, we believe that accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior must be shown in our behavior.  This is the ancient and ever-valid teaching of the Bible. The New Testament Letter of St. James, the cousin of Jesus, teaches this need for good works to accompany our faith: My friends, what good is it for one of you to say that you have faith if your actions do not prove it? Can that faith save you? Suppose there are brothers or sisters who need clothes and don't have enough to eat. What good is there in your saying to them, “God bless you! Keep warm and eat well!”—if you don't give them the necessities of life? So it is with faith: if it is alone and includes no actions, then it is dead. But someone will say, “One person has faith, another has actions.” My answer is, “Show me how anyone can have faith without actions. I will show you my faith by my actions.” (James 2:14-18)

We Catholics, following Scripture,  believe strongly that God's free gift and invitation to live in a right relationship with him means that we are to be personally, actively, involved in living out the invitation to salvation. But here's the thing: we even see our ability to do this as a free grace from God! He enables us to carry out acts of love, unselfish giving of ourselves like Jesus, solely by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit whom he has given us. It is a grace, a gift and not limited to just the first "yes" that we give to Jesus in accepting him as Lord and Savior.  The way different Christians express this in speech also reveals their particular theology of salvation. An Evangelical Protestant will say, "I AM saved once for all by Jesus Christ." Done. Complete. End of story. A Catholic Christian will say, "I am BEING saved by Jesus Christ each day that I live." Dynamic. Ongoing. Personally Involved.

As we saw in the quote from St. James, faith expressed through good works is the original and authentic understanding of salvation in Christianity.  The Protestant view did not come about until the 16th century.  The point in saying this is NOT simply to prove who is right and who is wrong - and leave it at that. The reason we do so is so that people can know what the Bible and the Church started by Christ actually teach about salvation. In this way people can learn what this means and how they are to receive and live it.  Their very happiness - here and hereafter - depends upon this!  

Of course, some people ask why do we need salvation? What are we being saved from? It might help to know that an alternative English translation for the word salvation (salus in Latin) is health or healing. In this light we can see that salvation means that the human person is healed of the spiritual wound caused by the ancient or original sin that separated humanity from a right relationship with God. I am sure you will recall that in the beginning when God created the human race we did not have this alienation from him. But we freely chose it. Or, more precisely, the first two humans, whom we call Adam (which simply means "man") and Eve (which means "mother") chose it on behalf of the human race that would descend from them. God gave them a choice: to live in union with him or to live life on their own terms apart from him. 

With the encouragement of Satan (who had already chosen to depart from life with God) the first humans chose autonomy from their Creator. And so the original gift of immorality and of intimacy with God was no longer part of the human experience. This is why we say that salvation puts us BACK into a right relationship with God. It returns us to where we were originally meant to be from the beginning. By accepting this free gift of salvation the individual Christian is saying in effect, "I do not agree with Adam and Eve's choice. I chose to live in union with God." And it was precisely to enable us to return to our origins (and give us even more grace and blessings than we had in the beginning) that God became human as Jesus of Nazareth. 

How this is connected to the Passion of Christ? To answer this we have to go to the Old Testament, particularly to the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. Hundreds of years before Jesus, this prophet foretold that a "Suffering Servant" would come like a lamb to the slaughter to be sacrificed for the spiritual good of the people.  This Suffering Servant would heal the rift and return us to a right relationship with God. This prophecy was fulfilled in the Passion of Christ which was his ultimate act of love offered to God for our salvation.

THE PROPHECY OF THE SUFFERING SERVANT

But because of our sins he was wounded,
    beaten because of the evil we did.
We are healed by the punishment he suffered,
    made whole by the blows he received.

All of us were like sheep that were lost,
    each of us going his own way.
But the Lord made the punishment fall on him,
    the punishment all of us deserved.

“He was treated harshly, but endured it humbly;
    he never said a word.
Like a lamb about to be slaughtered,
like a sheep about to be sheared,
    he never said a word.

He was arrested and sentenced and led off to die,
    and no one cared about his fate.
He was put to death for the sins of our people. 

(Isaiah 53:4-8)

DOGGIE BAG: A little something to take with you for spiritual snacking throughout the day.

Prayer of Repentance and Salvation: I confess with my lips that You, Jesus, are Lord and Savior. You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. I believe in my heart that God raised You from the dead and You that You are alive forevermore.  I believe that You have sent the Holy Spirit to dwell within me at baptism when You released me from the ancient sin and restored me to a right relationship with God the Father.  Come, Lord Jesus, and dwell within me by grace and faith and let this faith be shown as a light for all to see in the good works you will accomplish in me and through  me. Amen.

Saint Quote: Our Savior’s passion is a healing remedy for us, as the prophet Isaiah teaches when he cries out: “But for our sins he was wounded, for our iniquities he was bruised; upon him fell the chastisement that brought us peace, and by his wounds we are healed.” (St. Theodore of Cyr, d. 466AD)

Scripture Verse To Memorize: "He was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes us whole and by his wounds we were healed." (Isaiah 53:5)