“Weaving a crown out of thorns, they placed it on his head”-- Matthew 27:29 “weaving a crown of thorns, placed it on him”-- Mark 15:17 “And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and placed it on His head”-- John 19:2 . Why did Jesus wear a crown of thorns on Good Friday?Roman soldiers made it and put it on his head.But why?It’s obvious mockery. Instead of a crown of gold or silver, a crown of pain.And what pain.No one knows for sure where the thorns came from. But a leading candidate is Ziziphus spina-christi, which looks like this:.The word “plaited” means “twisted.” With that in mind, consider this description:“The crown of thorns was made of three branches plaited together, the greatest part of the thorns being purposely turned inwards so as to pierce our Lord's head. Having first placed these twisted branches on his forehead, they tied them tightly together at the back of his head …”So says Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), a German Catholic nun who reported receiving a detailed account of Jesus’s sufferings from Jesus himself, in Chapter XXVI of The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.While St. John Paul II beatified her in 2004, which is one step below being canonized a saint, even Catholics aren’t required to believe her purported private revelations. But many do, and find them interesting and helpful. One example: Mel Gibson’s 2004 movie The Passion of the Christ relies heavily on her account.Irrespective of the precise details of the crowning with thorns, though, we can imagine – dimly, perhaps -- the pulsating pain from having thorns driven into our flesh all around our head.Yet Jesus underwent many kinds of suffering during his passion – including sweating blood, scourging, beating, and, of course, crucifixion.Why also a crown of thorns?Let’s start with the “crown” part.Jesus is a king. There are several places in the Gospels that make this point, but perhaps the clearest is John 18:36, in which Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world.”Kings wear a crown -- though not usually of this type.Why thorns?Jesus suffered and died in order to atone for Original Sin, the original disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.Thorns play a role in the punishment of our first parents for eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.In Genesis 3:17-18, God says while describing his punishment of Adam:“Cursed is the ground because of you! … Thorns and thistles it shall bear for you …”By taking these very “thorns and thistles” onto his own head, Jesus is undoing the curse.He also invites us to take part in what he is doing – to rejoice in sufferings, as St. Paul says in Colossians 1:24, explaining that “in my flesh, I am filling up whatever is lacking in the sufferings of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church.”One of the Church Fathers, Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215), in his work Paedogogus describes the crown of thorns as a type of “danger” for us – “for there is no approaching to the Word without blood.”But it’s also, he says, a form of fruitfulness and life.“For the Lord’s crown prophetically pointed to us, who once were barren, but are placed around Him through the Church of which He is the Head,” Clement says.And more, he says, “The crown is the flower of those who have believed in the glorified one …”“It is a symbol, too, of the Lord’s successful work, He having borne on His head, the princely part of His body, all our iniquities by which we were pierced. For He by His own passion rescued us from offenses, and sins, and such like thorns; and having destroyed the devil, deservedly said in triumph, ‘O Death, where is thy sting?’ ”
“Weaving a crown out of thorns, they placed it on his head”-- Matthew 27:29 “weaving a crown of thorns, placed it on him”-- Mark 15:17 “And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and placed it on His head”-- John 19:2 . Why did Jesus wear a crown of thorns on Good Friday?Roman soldiers made it and put it on his head.But why?It’s obvious mockery. Instead of a crown of gold or silver, a crown of pain.And what pain.No one knows for sure where the thorns came from. But a leading candidate is Ziziphus spina-christi, which looks like this:.The word “plaited” means “twisted.” With that in mind, consider this description:“The crown of thorns was made of three branches plaited together, the greatest part of the thorns being purposely turned inwards so as to pierce our Lord's head. Having first placed these twisted branches on his forehead, they tied them tightly together at the back of his head …”So says Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), a German Catholic nun who reported receiving a detailed account of Jesus’s sufferings from Jesus himself, in Chapter XXVI of The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.While St. John Paul II beatified her in 2004, which is one step below being canonized a saint, even Catholics aren’t required to believe her purported private revelations. But many do, and find them interesting and helpful. One example: Mel Gibson’s 2004 movie The Passion of the Christ relies heavily on her account.Irrespective of the precise details of the crowning with thorns, though, we can imagine – dimly, perhaps -- the pulsating pain from having thorns driven into our flesh all around our head.Yet Jesus underwent many kinds of suffering during his passion – including sweating blood, scourging, beating, and, of course, crucifixion.Why also a crown of thorns?Let’s start with the “crown” part.Jesus is a king. There are several places in the Gospels that make this point, but perhaps the clearest is John 18:36, in which Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world.”Kings wear a crown -- though not usually of this type.Why thorns?Jesus suffered and died in order to atone for Original Sin, the original disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.Thorns play a role in the punishment of our first parents for eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.In Genesis 3:17-18, God says while describing his punishment of Adam:“Cursed is the ground because of you! … Thorns and thistles it shall bear for you …”By taking these very “thorns and thistles” onto his own head, Jesus is undoing the curse.He also invites us to take part in what he is doing – to rejoice in sufferings, as St. Paul says in Colossians 1:24, explaining that “in my flesh, I am filling up whatever is lacking in the sufferings of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church.”One of the Church Fathers, Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215), in his work Paedogogus describes the crown of thorns as a type of “danger” for us – “for there is no approaching to the Word without blood.”But it’s also, he says, a form of fruitfulness and life.“For the Lord’s crown prophetically pointed to us, who once were barren, but are placed around Him through the Church of which He is the Head,” Clement says.And more, he says, “The crown is the flower of those who have believed in the glorified one …”“It is a symbol, too, of the Lord’s successful work, He having borne on His head, the princely part of His body, all our iniquities by which we were pierced. For He by His own passion rescued us from offenses, and sins, and such like thorns; and having destroyed the devil, deservedly said in triumph, ‘O Death, where is thy sting?’ ”
