I sat in the darkness beside 6-year-old Faustina, waiting for the “light show” to begin. With the music, lights faded in and out on wooden hands, feet, and face. This was the venerated crucifix that adorned the Mamertine Prison, where St. Peter once sat on death row. As her family and I exited the church, Faustina asked, “Was that so we could see Jesus’ owies?”
Kids say the darndest things! They also challenge us with their straight-forward questions. Why should we look at Christ’s pain? What’s the point, say, of his crown of thorns?
Did Jesus endure so much just so we might say, “Gee, that must have really hurt?” Is God after our gaping? During Passion Week, we do well to ask ourselves what deeper sense imbues these otherwise morbid contemplations.
The barbed crown wasn’t pressed upon Jesus’ head just to make him wince. Above all, it mocked his confession of who he was.
“You’re the King of the Jews, are you? Well, a king needs a crown.”
But we must look deeper still. Within this earthly wreath, a heavenly teaching is interwoven.
Thorns, throughout the Scriptures, represent sin and evil. To allude to the demon that chastised him, St. Paul says, “A thorn was given me in the flesh” (2 Cor 12:7). Christ employed the metaphor in moral discourse: “Are grapes gathered from thorns or figs from thistles?” (Mt 7:16). That thorns and thistles are the result of sin, in fact, goes back to the Bible’s beginning. After Adam and Eve’s fall, God declares, “Cursed be the ground because of you... Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you (Gen 3:17).
In short, Christ fittingly wears thorns because he truly bears the sins of the world.
“He was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins, upon him is the chastisement that makes us whole” (Isaiah 53:5).
Christ’s unique crown underscores that even as he is a victim of love, he reigns as king. Indeed, he is the King of kings, but as our Holy Father has said, his is a “paradoxical lordship.”
King Jesus rules our hearts humbly, not tyrannically. His majesty, though solemn, is not imperious or imposing. In his woundedness, he woos us. Only if we submit in faith, can we become heirs of his kingdom.
So yes, Faustina, we may look at Jesus’ owies. But we should see his pain with eyes of faith.
Christ’s blood is translucent. We shouldn’t look at it so much as through it. From the throne of his cross, the King summons us to love as he loved.
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