REFLECTIONS ON THE SORROWFUL MYSTERIES

Based on the homilies of Don Fabio Rosini on the Sunday readings,
broadcast each week on Vatican Radio
(Please note that these reflections were not written by Don Fabio, but were inspired by his homilies) 

Each mystery of the Rosary is accompanied by a number of reflections. Any one of these may be sufficient to help you reflect on the entire decade.

The Sorrowful Mysteries

First Mystery: The Agony in the Garden
1. In one of his sayings, Jesus says that he has come to bring fire upon the earth and how he wishes that it were blazing already! The fire that will be lit is the Cross that becomes the light of the world. In Gethsemane the passion of Jesus begins, the passion in which he reveals his total love for us. Yes, Gethsemane is the beginning of Jesus’ agony, but let us not forget how he longed for this moment in which his love would illuminate the world.

2. Each one of us (to some extent) is locked in the closed room of our own self-interest. The room is surrounded by the barriers of fear and self-preservation that we erect around us. At Gethsemane, Jesus begins the process of breaking down these barriers of sin and leading us to our freedom. Eventually, on Easter Sunday, he will appear to the Apostles who had locked themselves in the Upper Room and say “Peace be with you!” But the process is not an easy one for Jesus and thus he enters his state of agony. He knows that he will be rejected by each one of us in turn, locked as we are behind the walls of egoism and sin which bind us.

3. John’s Gospel describes Jesus’ agony in a revealing way. Some Greeks come looking for the Lord because they have heard of his fame. Jesus responds by saying that the hour of his glory has now arrived. But then he describes this glory in terms of the grain of wheat that falls to the ground and dies, yielding a rich harvest. The glory of God is not something spectacular or ostentatious. It is something that is most manifest in his suffering because it consists in his capacity to empty himself completely for the sake of others.

4. We should be aware that our hour will surely come too, the hour in which we must choose between saving our own skins, or trusting in God. When that hour comes, will we continue to hide behind the defensive barriers that we erect around us? Or will we open the doors of our prison and say: "This hour is upon me because the Father wishes to accomplish something in me". How often, when confronted by difficult moments in life, do we say, "Father, save me from this hour!" Often our prayers are like this because the God we adore is not the God of Jesus Christ. We ask God to do our will, and we get angry if he doesn't comply. The God of Jesus is the one to whom we must entrust ourselves saying, "Father, not my will but yours be done!" as Jesus said in Gethsemane.

Second Mystery: The Scourging at the Pillar
1. In the scourging, we see Jesus completely stripped of his human dignity, being tortured mercilessly. How attached we all are to our own self-interested goals, to our comfort, to our public image, to the attention and approval of others. We worship our own wellbeing, but the real master we must serve is the Lord! In the scourging, we see how Jesus hands himself over completely to those who strip him of human dignity. He has the capacity to do this freely because the only master that he follows is the Father.

2. Contemplate the suffering Jesus, but marvel at his inner freedom! When we live a life preoccupied by our material wellbeing, we lose a sense of what really brings genuine flavour and joy to life. By contrast, when we entrust ourselves to God, we experience the extraordinary consolations that are part and parcel of the Kingdom of Heaven and its justice. These things alone deserve our anxious effort! We shouldn’t fear that we will lose our material pleasures if we turn to God; we should fear the possibility of losing God if we continue to worship material things. This is the risk of clinging to worldly things. We wallow in them and our lives become encrusted with material objects and attitudes. Such things of no lasting value prevent us from becoming free children of God.

3. Look at how Jesus entrusts himself into the hands of the Father. We go around in circles trying to avoid suffering in our lives. We dread confronting the evils within ourselves and all around us. But these sufferings are the places where we learn to entrust ourselves to God. The things that we find incomprehensible, the things that humiliate us, these are the concrete situations of our existence where we consign ourselves into the hands of God.

4. The sufferings that present themselves to us are the places where we decide whether God exists or not, whether the Father is the one to which we must entrust ourselves or not. If we abandon ourselves into his hands as Jesus did, then we allow ourselves to be formed by him. Our sufferings are thus an opportunity for us to throw ourselves into the arms of God, trusting him in obedience and becoming true disciples.

Third Mystery: The Crowning with Thorns
1. The crowning with thorns highlights the fact that the Kingdom of Jesus is utterly different from the kingdoms of this world. Our kings demand adulation and service, but Christ the King prefers to be humiliated if it permits him to be of greater service to us. The great and mighty of this world pursue goals of self-aggrandisement and self-satisfaction. But the Kingdom that is ruled by Christ is entered by renouncing all that we own.

2. Parables such as that of the mustard seed reveal that the Kingdom of God will come to fruition in ways that we do not expect. This is made evident by the fact that our King is crowned with thorns and led to an ignominious death. We provide the ground in which the future Kingdom can flourish by trusting in God despite all the obstacles. In this way, something small in our lives can in time become the great work of God.

3. In today's scientific, rationalistic, culture there is a tendency to accept everything that makes sense to us, and to dismiss everything that is incomprehensible. The cross never fits in with our approach to life, but the cross is an absolutely essential part of the experience of love. It is not possible to love someone unless we are willing to stand beside that person and serve them at times when it seems absurd. Our despised King, crowned with thorns, is rejected by the powers that be, and yet his actions explode into the great tree where all the birds find rest and everyone comes to find shelter. Whoever has faith finds shelter in this great tree; whoever is willing to wait until God brings his designs to maturity, refraining from making judgements according to the size or greatness of what the eyes can see, trusting only in the action of God.

Fourth Mystery: The Carrying of the Cross
1. Here we encounter the one who truly bears the burdens of all of us. Isaiah tells of the suffering servant who does not turn away from pain and disgrace. Jesus does not turn away from our suffering. The attitude he displays during the passion is of one who can bear all shame and ignominy because he trusts in the Lord. Shame cannot touch him inside because of his unshakeable relation to the Father. How quickly we feel ashamed when we do not win, when we look bad in the eyes of others! Let us imitate Jesus who never wavers in placing his trust in the Father.

2. The carrying of the Cross emphasizes the burden Jesus bears in the service of each one of us. The central figure in the processional Gospel on Palm Sunday is the donkey who carries Jesus into Jerusalem. When the Lord comes to us, he is always borne on the shoulders of someone else! The Christian life is a life called to service. We bring Christ to others by becoming beasts of burden, carrying the weight of others.

3. Service is all about bearing the burdens of others, not focussing on carrying our own load. The donkey becomes important because he carries Jesus to glory. We too only become significant when we bear the burden and carry Jesus to others. While we carry only our own weight we remain obscure and alone. 

4. The Suffering Servant is one who bears the burden of others. When Jesus carries the Cross, he bears all of our sins, and he does so willingly and without complaint. His silence and humility are marks of one who acts in complete submission to the Father. In carrying the Cross, he lifts all of humanity on his shoulders towards God.

Fifth Mystery: The Crucifixion
1. On the Cross the good thief discovered that to be with Jesus is to be in Paradise. When Peter, James and John ascended the mountain with Jesus at the Transfiguration, they too realised that to be with Jesus is to be in Paradise. Let us take time each day to ascend the mountain with Jesus and behold his beauty, to hang on the cross beside him and behold his majesty. If we look at the Cross in a superficial way, then it looks like defeat. But if we look at it in contemplation, then we see the glory of Christ who has loved us as no other.

2. The Cross is often the scalpel of God that transforms us into new creatures. When we give ourselves into the hands of God in tribulation and pain, he is able to work wonders! Either we decide to entrust ourselves or we do not. Either we abandon ourselves into his hands one day, or we continue to follow our own paths that are infested with serpents. We will only comprehend the love of God for us when we entrust ourselves to him totally. Jesus loved us to the extent of delivering himself into our hands. He awaits until we do the opposite – entrust ourselves to him. Once we do that, then we will experience what he can achieve with our lives.

3. On the Feast of Christ the King, we read a passage about a king who is tortured and insulted and whose throne is the cross! The religious leaders insult Jesus, calling for a miracle if he really is the Messiah. We want religion to perform miracles, to eliminate suffering NOW. Jesus on the Cross shows that his Kingdom does not eliminate suffering now. The soldiers mock Jesus, saying that if he really is a king then he should be able to come down off the cross. The soldiers represent the temporal powers of the world. Jesus on the Cross shows that his Kingdom is not a Kingdom where temporal power is manifested now. The bad thief represents suffering humanity in its bitterness and anger towards the God who will not relieve it of its burdens. We look at God in moments of distress and say, “Where are you? Why do you do nothing? Why did you allow this to happen?” Jesus on the Cross shows that his Kingdom is not the Kingdom of quick solutions and easy answers. 

4. The good thief represents the one who trusts in the providence of God despite the present suffering. He sees beyond the present moment to a future in which God’s reign will prevail. All of the characters in this drama were asking Jesus to be a particular type of king, the kind of king that suited their particular needs. Only the good thief has understood the kind of king that Jesus is! He is king that does not take us down from the Cross. Rather, the Cross is the instrument by which we learn obedience, gradually coming to follow the Lord in humility. In this way Jesus takes us by means of the Cross to paradise.