The Crown of Thorns
April 5, 2017
Christ with Crown of Thorns, Johann Meinrad Guggenbichler; 1682
Reflect then, Christian reader, that our divine Savior is crowned with sharp thorns, to punish on his own head all your sinful deeds, but more especially the wicked thoughts, by which you have offended God, and have defiled his divine image impressed upon your soul. Numerous thorns pierce, and torture his divine head, because we have harbored in our mind many bad thoughts of different kinds. Our thoughts against faith and against hope, our thoughts of presumption, or despair, impious and blasphemous thoughts against God, have produced the longest and sharpest thorns that torment the most holy head of our divine Savior. Our habitual dissipation of mind, our forgetfulness of God’s holy presence, our voluntary distractions in prayer, are the reeds with which, like his cruel executioners, we strike and more deeply press his thorny crown. Uncharitable thoughts against our neighbors, rash judgment, envy and jealousy against our fellow Christians, are the cruel thorns that torture our Savior’s head. Those frequent thoughts of pride/ambition, vain-glory; that hypocrisy, that habitual disposition to overreach, and deceive our fellow men, so common in human society at the present time, those desires of revenge, sensuality and lust, have produced that terrible thorny bush from which the Crown of Thorns has been formed, that pricks and torment the head of the incarnate Son of God.
Whilst, Christian reader, you are considering the sufferings of your Savior crowned with thorns, enter into your heart and examine therein what are the evil thoughts that more frequently occupy your mind. Conceive a sincere sorrow for them. Ask with profound humility your Savior’s pardon; and firmly resolve for the future to watch over your heart, and promptly to banish from your mind every imagination or thought that may be displeasing to God, and calculated to increase the sufferings of your loving Redeemer, crowned with thorns as the King of Sorrows. It is only in this practical way that we can render our spiritual reading, or our meditation on the Passion of our dear Lord, pleasing to his Sacred Heart, and profitable to our souls.
— Fr. G. Rossi, C.P., The Mystery of the Crown of Thorns, 1879
