The Fruit of the Second Sorrowful Mystery: Purity
The scourging of Jesus at the pillar is a heartrending scene. The most innocent Lamb of God delivers His body over to one of the cruelest and most barbaric of punishments – a Roman scourging – to show us the depth of His love for us in our human weakness.
Ever since the Fall of our first parents, there has been something amiss within us. This something is called concupiscence, “the law of the flesh”, which is an effect of original sin. Before Adam and Eve sinned, they bore the flawless image of God. As St. Augustine taught, their bodies were delightfully and perfectly submissive to their souls, which were completely ordered to God… what peaceful bliss! However, when their souls rebelled against God, their bodies rebelled against their souls. Concupiscence is the fruit of this rebellion – the wounding of the image of God within us – a tendency to sin at loggerheads with “the law of the spirit” (cf. Rom 7:21-25). Having inherited original sin, our emotions are no longer spontaneously in harmony with right reason, our intellects are darkened, and our wills are weakened. We experience a disordered desire for self-enjoyment, even at the expense of others.
At the pillar, the innocent pains of Jesus made reparation for our guilty pleasures. This is why purity is the fruit of this mystery. Purity – or cleanness of heart – is the virtue that struggles against the inner disintegration of concupiscence. Purity is freedom from all disorder, whether that be purity of faith, purity of intention, or purity of morals. The latter refers especially to the virtue of chastity – a virtue that merits our special attention because of the hypersexualized culture that surrounds us at every turn.
Let’s face it: We live in an age of reckless self-indulgence. The spirit of the age says to us, “Do what feels good.” From the pillar, our Saviour sounds a different message: “Do what love demands.” Chastity is simply charity in the sexual realm. The Church teaches that sexual activity is chaste when it is an act of self-donation between spouses, not merely an act of self-gratification. When sexual activity is pure, people are loved. When sexual activity is impure, people are used. The question we need to ask ourselves is, “What is the goal of this sexual activity: self-gift or self-gratification?”
By His scourging, Jesus teaches us to deny our impure desires for the sake of love. He teaches us to live words of Consecration: “This is my body, given up for you” (Lk 22:19). Loving like Jesus is not easy, but Jesus does not ask for the impossible… He has given us a powerful medicine for concupiscence, and that medicine is the Eucharist! Jesus invites us to feed on infinite Purity – His own Body and Blood – to obtain the supernatural power to submit the flesh to the spirit. Nourished by this “Bread of Angels”, we can grow in purity through mortification – the practice of self-denial to strengthen our wills and thereby acquire self-mastery. For example, we can mortify our curiosity by deliberately choosing not to look at a magazine that is innocent but unnecessary, in order to acquire the discipline to instantly look away when confronted with an image that is pornographic. We can mortify our desire for pleasure by little acts of fasting, such as choosing something we don’t like the next time we fill our plate at a buffet. We may even choose do something very uncomfortable – like taking a cold shower – to train the spirit to occupy the driver’s seat, not the flesh. Whenever we make a mortification, we should make it out of love for our suffering Saviour, uniting our sacrifice to His. When we consider how much Jesus suffered to pardon our impurities, our little acts of self-denial no longer seem so hard.
Our culture implies that our rampant impurity is without consequences, without victims. Not so! Look at what our sins did to Jesus. The severity of Jesus’ suffering at the pillar teaches us that sins of impurity have terrible repercussions for others. What about the lacerated hearts of all people – especially women – who are used and then discarded as objects for the self-gratification of others? What about the torn bodies of millions of unborn children through the scourge of abortion? What about the profound spiritual, psychological, and physical wounds inflicted on victims of human trafficking, including countless little ones whose innocence and childhood is brutally stripped away? What about the bleeding out of authentic masculinity and femininity – and the crisis of identity suffered by many – when we reject the divine design for human sexuality?
Few of us have passed unscathed through the pervasive impurity of contemporary society. Sometimes, as a result of the sins we have committed, encountering the Church’s teaching on sexual morality can trigger intense feelings of guilt and shame within us. My dear brothers and sisters, if this is you, I beg you to remember: “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1)! The greatest consolation we can give to Jesus at the pillar is to let His Precious Blood fall upon our souls, stained by impurity, and wash them white as snow. His mercy is attracted to our misery – we have only to repent. We are not our sins, but the beloved children of our Father, who loved and treasured us so deeply that He gave His only Son to be our gentle and compassionate Saviour. We must not hide from God in our shame like our first parents did, but run, run to Jesus… for “by his stripes we are healed” (Is 53: 5).
