7th Tuesday in honor of St. Dominic
On this fourth Tuesday in the series of 15 Tuesdays in honor of our Holy Father St. Dominic, our reflection considers the suffering of Jesus in the Scourging, and how our suffering and penance (and St. Dominic's) can be joined to Our Lord for the salvation of the world.
If you are joining us after the beginning of the 15 Tuesdays, don’t worry! Fifteen weeks is a long time, and you can begin at any point to grow in love of God and devotion to St. Dominic through joining in.
Christ's Suffering in Reparation for Sin
As we consider the Mystery of Christ's Scourging at the Pillar, we are particularly struck by the magnitude of His sufferings. He of Whom Pilate said, “I find no guilt in Him,” was subjected to the inhuman cruelty of a Roman scourging, a punishment so degrading that Roman citizens were exempt from it.
Why did Our Lord submit to this terrible punishment? It was in reparation for our sins. As Father Walter Farrell, O.P., writes: “He suffered every manner of suffering and His sufferings were greater in intensity than any other the world has ever seen.… Christ insisted that every one of his faculties operate to its fullest for the redemption of man. All this suffering was in the most complete sense voluntary. He took upon Himself the amount and degree of suffering proportionate to the fruit that suffering was expected to bear—nothing less than the redemption of all men from all sin.”
Suffering in Union with Christ in Reparation for Sin
As members of Christ’s Body, we share in His redemptive suffering. This is both a duty and a comfort. It is our duty to be conformed to Christ: “Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus…he humbled himself and became obedient unto death” (Philippians 2: 5, 8). But it is also our great consolation as members of Christ to know that our sufferings are never meaningless. Although, unlike Jesus, we justly deserve to be afflicted for our sins, we should never regard our trials as merely distasteful punishments; nor should we limit ourselves to the thought that voluntary mortification helps curb and reorder our disordered passions. Once we are united to Christ in Baptism, everything that happens to us happens to us as Christians. We can say with Saint Paul, “I fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of His Body, the Church” (Colossians 1:24).
This realization is what drove St. Dominic, and the other saints, to do penance. Every night our Holy Father scourged himself thrice: once for his own sins, once for the souls in Purgatory, and once for sinners here on earth. This practice, and the many other mortifications he imposed on himself, were motivated by the desire to imitate Christ, to be one with Him in making reparation for sin. Closer to our own experience, perhaps, is another story told of St. Dominic. While journeying from place to place, he would take off his shoes and travel barefoot. If he came to an especially rough place or hit his foot against a stone, he would exclaim cheerfully, "Now this is penance!"
While not many people are called to heroic acts of penance, we are all called, by God's grace, to bear patiently the small inconveniences of everyday life as well as the larger sufferings that come our way. We can also give up some legitimate pleasures in order to focus our desires more strongly on Christ, and make reparation for our sins and those of others. May we, like St. Dominic, unite our sufferings and penances to Jesus’ Passion for the sake of His Body, the Church.
Additional Prayers
If you would like to observe this day with additional devotions, we have posted the following prayers in the past: