The Scourging at the Pillar

The Scourging at the Pillar is the second of the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Holy Rosary. It commemorates the suffering inflicted upon Christ at the order of Pontius Pilate, before the Crowning with Thorns and the Carrying of the Cross. The bare fact is recorded in all four canonical Gospels: Matthew 27:26, Mark 15:15, Luke 23:16 (proposed by Pilate as a lesser sentence), and most directly John 19:1.

The mystery

After the trial before the Sanhedrin and the appearance before Pilate, the Roman governor, having found "no case" against the accused (Luke 23:14), proposed to chastise and release him. The crowd, however, demanded the death penalty. Saint John records simply: "Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged" (John 19:1). The act was, in part, an attempt by Pilate to satisfy the crowd's demand for a lesser sentence; in part, the customary Roman preliminary to crucifixion.

The instrument of the scourging was the Roman flagrum, a multi-thonged whip with bone or metal fragments embedded at the tips. The procedure is well attested in Roman historical sources, including Josephus and Tacitus. The Gospels do not narrate the act in detail; the Christian tradition has consistently respected this restraint. The Catholic devotional reflection on the mystery does not require the multiplication of horrific detail; the silent fact of the Lord's submission to the scourge is the matter for meditation.

Meditation on purity

The traditional spiritual fruit of the Scourging at the Pillar is purity. The mystery presents Christ, the Lamb of God without sin, suffering in his bodily nature for the sins of humanity. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, in his Sermones in Cantica, observes that the body which is suffering in this mystery is the same body which had been miraculously preserved from corruption from the moment of its conception in the Virgin's womb. Christ's bodily purity, taken on for the redemption of humanity, is the model and the source of the purity to which the Christian is called.¹

The first Letter of Saint Peter (1 Peter 2:24) draws the same theological connection: "He himself bore our sins in his body upon the cross, so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed."

Praying the Scourging at the Pillar

To pray the second Sorrowful Mystery: announce "The second Sorrowful Mystery, the Scourging at the Pillar," pray an Our Father, ten Hail Marys while meditating on the silent submission of Christ to the scourge, and conclude with a Glory Be and the Fatima Prayer.

For the previous mystery, see the Agony in the Garden. For the next mystery, see the Crowning with Thorns.

Sources

Footnotes

1. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones super Cantica Canticorum, Sermon 28. ↩