The crowning with thorns: third painful mystery 

by Ottavio De Bertolis

How many times in Scripture do we find expressions such as: "Illuminate your face upon us, Lord". And here is how those invocations were answered: God shows his face in his Son, because truly whoever sees him sees the Father; and the Son shows His glory not in human logic, but in His wisdom, which is madness in the eyes of this world, that is, in His mocked, derided, disfigured face, becoming "a man of sorrows who knows suffering well, as one faced from whom we cover our faces,” according to Isaiah.

In fact, in front of all the poor we turn our faces away, precisely because it is difficult for us to hold their gaze; but in this way we close our eyes to Jesus himself, truly present in them. And so the contemplation of this mystery must lead us along two tracks, which are the same: on the one hand contemplating God, as he manifested himself, and on the other contemplating men, their very faces as the image and likeness of the face of God.

And so Jesus tells us: “My people, what harm have I done to you? In what way have I tired you? Answer me,” just as we hear Good Friday sung in the prophecies. God submits to the power of evil, that same power that crushes, outrages, marginalizes and oppresses many men and women; He asks us for compassion, that is, to suffer with Him, and this is not possible unless we take on ourselves, for what we are given, the pains of others, to offer comfort and relief, since "he took on our pains and borne our iniquities."

In the mystery of the Passion there is a kind of reversal of what we would expect: we believe that the "glory of God" corresponds to human glory, that is, to the power and majesty of those who, by definition, are higher of all; and so, if he who rules in this world is glorified, how much more so is He who created the whole world. And instead the crowning with thorns gives us the true sense of the majesty and glory of God, all the higher the more He humbled Himself.

The Psalms say that the heavens declare the glory of God, and so it is relatively simple to see the power of God in the splendor of his works; but how much greater is the splendor that is revealed to us in that marvelous work which is the Son himself, through whom all things were made! Thus, as the Liturgy expresses itself, in the Passion it reveals to us the true meaning of his glory. The power of God is revealed in him allowing himself to be denied, rejected, rejected, blasphemed, insulted and mocked. In fact, what the Psalm prophesies is fulfilled in Jesus: "I am a stranger to my brothers, a stranger to my mother's children".

This is why He is present in those who are strangers to us, not so much and not only in those who are close to us, and in a particular way in foreigners, who are strangers "by nature". Again, the same Psalm states: “I have become their mockery. Those who sat at the door spoke ill of me, the drunkards mocked me." God has become a stranger and stranger to many, and has been mocked and derided by the drunken, not with wine but with presumption, pride and arrogance.

We can truly pray that the Lord illuminates His face on all of us: on believers, so that he may inspire in us the spirit of contemplation of His true glory; on non-believers, so that he shows himself as a true king of glory, in the mercy that he wanted to show us, allowing himself to be mocked and insulted; and finally on everyone, believers and non-believers, because we allow ourselves to be struck by the gaze and face of the poor, because He makes himself present in them, as in a sort of sacrament. Furthermore, let us not forget that His face is also a shelter, as it is written about the righteous: "You hide them in the shelter of your face, far from the intrigues of men, you hide them in the secret of your abode, you raise them on the rock ”.

Here His face is His word: in fact all the words of Scripture are like the dots of a photograph, or the brushstrokes of a painting, whose overall figure is Christ. Whoever guards his word every day, like Mary, is guarded by it: in it he finds shelter and comfort, because the holy face of the Lord will always illuminate his darkness.