Rosary Meditation with the Mystics | The Sorrowful Mysteries Explained

Peace be with you and with your spirit. Welcome to another episode of St. Anony's Tongue. I am your host W. So I feel as if many of us, we are not fully tapping into the magnificence and power and beauty of the rosary. Last episode, I even said we're praying it wrong. And I say this because many of us, we only pray the rosary as an offering. We pray it as something to receive grace, something to do to honor Mary. But the rosary is meant to do something else. It's a contemplative tool. It's meant to increase the awareness of God in our lives. And you see that through the meditations. And yet, I find when many people pray the rosary, they don't really sit with the meditations. Especially when we're praying in a group, we kind of just name and announce the mystery and keep going.

And I think this is for a few reasons. First, I think many of us, we've never really had access or we've never been exposed to meditations on the rosary. Perhaps you have the same mystery book you've been kicking around since OCIA, or perhaps you've been using the same guides, or perhaps you just name the mystery and keep going. But many of us, we've never been introduced to a contemplative style of meditation, which I talk about in a lot of my work. And I think the other issue is we really have never been introduced, many people have never been introduced to a style of rosary that includes pauses, that includes moments for reflection, moments of meditation. The Catholic Church teaches us the path towards union. It teaches us the system of contemplative prayer, focal prayer that leads to meditation that leads to contemplation. And that's all right there in the rosary. But we have to meditate. And often the rosary, we're just going, going, going, and we're not sitting.

So this week, every day I am sharing a reflection upon the mysteries. Very laid-back, very casual. And then at the end of this series, I will be guiding you through a rosary, including pauses, including places to stop and reflect to increase the awareness of God in our lives. So yesterday we did the joyful mysteries, and today we are doing the sorrowful mysteries. And I'm not doing this alone. I'm bringing two mystics alongside me. Today's mystics are Katherine of Sienna and Teresa of Avila. So despite being someone who writes and speaks upon contemplative theology, and someone who writes and speaks about the mystics, the mystics love the sorrowful mysteries. The mystics love writing reflections on the passion. I love writing reflections on the passion. But strangely, today is probably going to be one of my more straightforward and even shorter reflection episodes. Yesterday, when we talked about the joyful mysteries, I really pulled certain lines that really leapt out at me that maybe you've missed. Lines like the annunciation with the Holy Spirit overshadows Our Lady. Or the fact that she was greatly troubled and she said yes anyway. Or the fact that after she was filled with God, she made haste. She went out to Elizabeth, which symbolizes when we are filled with God, our inclination is to share it with others. But I'm not really going to do that today because today I want to share the sorrowful mysteries as the path of our soul. I have done episodes on this. Last year I did the sorrowful mysteries with the saints, and I had each mystery paired with a saint. It was a very long and kind of dense. Uh, but today I want to kind of talk about that same arc, 'cause I've never really heard anyone else talk about it. I'm sure others have made this symbolic connection. But this is what I want to do today. I want to talk about the sorrowful mysteries as the path of the soul. And again, when I share these reflections, I'm not giving you things to parrot when you are meditating upon the mysteries. I want to give you jumping-off points. And I think this idea of the sorrowful mysteries as the journey of the soul might be a good jumping-off place for your own sorrowful mystery reflections.

So really quickly, what do I mean? What do I mean that the sorrowful mysteries are the pathway of the soul? Let me explain very briefly. So this concept was actually inspired by Teresa of Avila, right? Teresa of Avila says the soul is like a crystal castle or a crystal mansion, and we move through various rooms until we unite with Christ. So this idea is very Teresian, but it's also very common in the mystical contemplative tradition. I would say many of the mystics you are aware of and familiar with, they have this pathway type theology. Teresa has her Interior Castle. Bonaventure has the Many-Winged Seraph. Every wing represents a different aspect of the soul. You also have the Ascent of Mount Carmel, St. John of the Cross. The soul is ascending a mountain. You have The Ground of Being by Meister Eckhart. Uh, Catherine of Sienna even talks about the cross as a bridge, and there's different pathways when we go over the bridge that is the crucifix. Um, I'm missing some important ones. Hildegard of Bingen has the Greening of the Soul and the steps towards greening. There's another one I'm missing that's really big, but you get the point. Bernard of Clairvaux, he has the Many Ways of Loving God, the stages of loving God, the stages of the soul falling in love with God. So you have this all over the place. So this right here is Teresian, uh, this concept. So I'm just going to say it very quickly because I want the bulk of this episode to be reflections. Uh, but what do I mean? I mean that every mystery is also a step in our own journey.

So we start out with the Garden of Gethsemane. The Garden of Gethsemane is Christ saying yes. Even though he is in darkness, even though he is in despair, even though he is in pain, he still says yes anyway. And there will be times in our life where we are called to do that as well. Say yes in the darkness. Say yes even though we do not feel like it. Then later, he is stripped and scourged at the pillar. Stripping and scourging. This has always been indicative or symbolic of purging. Purging ourselves of sin, selfishness, and ego. Then we also have the Crowning. This is public humiliation. There will be times in our life where we are misunderstood, uh, or times in our life where we need to kind of let go. It kind of does tie in with the scourging as well. But the Crowning is that public humiliation, that going out even if it means being humiliated. Then we have the Carrying of the Cross, of course, that is carrying our own burdens, carrying our own missions, even though it is difficult. Then we also have, of course, the Death on the Cross, which was when we complete our mission, and that's where the sorrowful mysteries stop. But there's another layer if you are going to make this into a mystical catechisis. After the crucifixion, what happens? Christ descends into hell. Ascends into darkness. Therefore, after our own crucifixion, after our own sacrifice that we make, we too will go into darkness for a bit. But now we will see that Christ reigns there too. And then we will resurrect alongside us. So this pathway of the sorrowful mysteries often mirrors our own spiritual journey. And sometimes it will be intense. Sometimes it's real bodily suffering. Other times it's small embarrassments and small setbacks. But we will see that pattern in our spiritual life again. And it's not always linear. And things like the crucifixion and the sacrifice that might range in meaning and sometimes is more extreme than others. But there will definitely be moments of darkness that follow a moment of pain. But with Christ in hell, in the darkness, in the depths, we will raise with him again.

So that was it in a nutshell. That way, you don't have to listen to me go through all of the mysteries to get all of those details. But that's what I want to focus on today, which also means this episode will be a little more straightforward. But now, let's talk about those two mystics. Why did I choose Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Sienna? Let's talk about them really quickly, and then let's go to the Garden of Gethsemane.

So, why choose Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Sienna? Well, I already kind of gave you one reason for Teresa of Avila because I'm framing this episode on putting ourselves within the sorrowful mysteries and how that applies to our soul. She does that in the Interior Mansion, the Interior Castle, her very important work. But also, um, Teresa of Avila, she was known to have bouts of spiritual dryness. She did not have her first consolation until she was in her mid to late 40s. So she was a nun for decades before she even felt close to God at all in prayer. But she kept showing up. She kept going back to God. And I think that's very important. And also, and this can tie to Catherine, to Teresa as well, but Catherine of Sienna, why I'm bringing her up is a few reasons. First off, she really embodies mystical theology to me. Well, she did not come up with this. I say it in every episode. Say it in this one. It's the gentle mirror of the soul. The gentle mirror of the soul, I feel, is one of the most important Catholic theological concepts, and it does predate Catherine a little bit. You see some of it with Clare of Assisi. Uh, this was a very important and very popular medieval idea and medieval devotional concept, but it states that the soul is the gentle mirror of God. We were made in the image of God, and then we fell. Therefore, our soul no longer reflects His image. It's smudged. It's dirty. Therefore, the spiritual life is cleansing the mirror of our soul until we radiate Christ once more. That is also why in the Magnificat, Mary says, "What my soul magnifies? My soul reflects the greatness of God." Catherine writes about this in her Dialogue, which is her most known and important work. But she talks about the mirror of the soul, reflecting Christ to the world. That's why I always say the point of the Christian faith is not doing everything right and getting into heaven. The point is to become transformed by the love of God and then reflect Him to the world. It's cleansing that mirror. That mirror that has been smudged by sin, by selfishness and ego. How do we cleanse that mirror? We cleanse it through the sacraments. Yes, we also cleanse it through prayer. But Catherine also shows that it becomes cleansed through sacrifice. And she did this in two ways. And I think we kind of overlook one. We overlook the fact that she did this through actual acts of service, actually feeding the hungry, actually clothing the naked, actually being a nurse and taking care of those suffering with the bubonic plague and doing it with charity. In those moments, she revealed the loving, merciful nature of God. So, it's very incarnational. It's very hands-on. Then there's the other. She did have the stigmata. She did have, uh, really intense bouts of, uh, victim soulhood, which we'll kind of talk about, and just really austere flesh mortification practices, and she offered that up to God. Now, what do we mean by that? This is another bafflingly lesser-known concept in Catholicism. I'm saying baffling because this is key to our faith and I rarely hear anyone talk about it. It's redemptive suffering. So when Christ died on the cross, Christ was suffering on the cross. He used his pain, his agony, as a prayer to the Father, saying, "I'm suffering for these people, God. Since I'm suffering for these people, Father, please forgive them. Turn your face back toward them." So, as Catholics, we believe that we can do something similar. We do not have the same redemptive power of Jesus, but we feel as if we can do something similar. We too can use our pain, our suffering, our agony, our discomfort as a prayer to God, as an offering. Lord, if I suffer through this with grace, please turn your face back on the atheists who don't believe in you. That's what, uh, Teresa did. Please turn your face upon this individual person who may have strayed from you. So, we use that as sacrifice. And that is what you're supposed to be doing during the Lenten season. We forget that. Many people think Lent is this challenge, but no, when you fast during Lent, it's not always supposed to be for you. It's supposed to be for other people. Uh, Pope Benedict XVI wrote about this extensively. Pope John Paul II wrote an entire, um, I don't think it was an encyclical. It was an apostolic letter on redemptive suffering. Highly recommended. But Catherine of Sienna embodies this in her work and her life. She used her stigmata pain as an offering to God, offering it up to those away from the Father. Uh, she used her many, and she went over the top flesh mortifications, to those away from God. So you have, uh, that redemptive suffering. And of course, that's going to tie in perfectly with the sorrowful mysteries because the sorrowful mysteries are all about making sacrifices for others who are away from God.

All right, let's go to the garden now. So let's start with the garden. So in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ is experiencing the darkest day of his life. He's scared. He's terrified. He is on his knees in agony. And in that moment, in God's darkest moment, what does he ask of the disciples? He does not ask them to do a ritual, to go and protest, to go and fight, to pray another chaplet, another novena, pray a rosary. What does he say? He says, "Come sit with me. Keep watch with me." However, they couldn't. Why? Because they were asleep. Luke tells us they were asleep for sorrow. They were overwhelmed. So, I think that is one that I've been coming back to a lot. I just did an entire episode on it. But that fruit has always spoken to me. And this is a little different than our mystical pathway of the soul. This is a little bit of a tangent, but it's a good fruit that I recommend you sit with because often we think about Christ and what Christ wants with us, what He wants from us, and we think, "Oh, He wants another rosary. He wants another devotion. He wants another consecration. He wants all these things." And sometimes He just wants you to keep watch and sit with Him. We feel like the only way to sit with Christ is to perform for Him. But no, He just wants you. God does not want your performance. He just wants your presence. Or he does not want your performance. He just wants your awareness. A bit of a better line, but not as iterative. So, I think that's big. So, that's one I want you to sit with in the garden.

Another, and again, this is a bit of a tangent. This is one of my favorite mysteries, so I'm going to give you some bonus ones. And again, these are just jumping-off points for you, not something I necessarily want you to always repeat. I'm trying to inspire you to meditate upon your own. But another is the fact that Jesus knows that everything will be okay. He knows the outcome. He knows that He is going to descend, defeat death, and then resurrect. He's God. And yet, He is still sorrowful unto death. He's still so anxious that He sweats blood. He's still so anxious that He barrels over on His knees. He's still so anxious that He prays for an angel to console Him. And how relatable is that, dear lovers of God? How often do we know that everything's going to be okay? We know that everything will be all right. We know that God's got our back. And yet, we still are so anxious. We still feel so much agony. That's as if we can sweat blood. Christ is with you in that moment. He understands you, and we too can pray for Him and an angel to console us in that garden.

All right. But here, Jesus, He's sweating blood. He's anxious. And what does He do? He actually asks for an out. "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass." And yet, "Not my will, but yours be done." So there will be times where you go into prayer and you ask God for relief. You ask God to assist you, to be with you, to walk with you, to let this cup pass. And you get nothing. You get nothing at all. You get no relief. You get no resolve. And I think that happens to a lot of us in the early spiritual life. It can feel warm and illuminating and rewarding. But eventually, the soul, it enters Gethsemane. Prayer becomes dry. It becomes confusing. It becomes heavy. You feel alone. You feel abandoned. And nothing happens. And this is often not God running from you. It's not God turning away from you. It's God using darkness to draw you near. Using silence. Using sometimes what I call veiling. When God veils, so you get up and look for Him to send you off to your transformative journey because love can now be chosen without emotional support. You can now choose to love God for God's sake rather than the consolations He gives you. So this is consent. This is just keeping watch, continuing to show up when everything feels dry. It's not dramatic holiness. It's not even a visible sacrifice. This is just remaining with God even when we don't feel Him. The Psalms talk about the watchman keeping watch for the sun even during daybreak. Waiting for the sun to come up. In other words, I totally messed that quote up. And we too are those watchmen. We wait for God. Sometimes we don't feel His warmth. Sometimes we feel cold. Sometimes we don't see His brightness. Sometimes it is dark. But the sun is still in the sky, and God is still there. So here we will have that Gethsemane moment in our life. Sometimes it'll be dramatic. Sometimes it'll be subtle, but we will have it. And the key is to remain.

Let's bring in some mystics. Now, I didn't talk about John of the Cross. Why? Because we talked about him last episode. But yeah, John of the Cross would work here as well. But that's kind of too easy, too predictable. So let's talk about Teresa of Avila. She consistently teaches that perseverance in prayer matters much more than sweetness in prayer. The important thing is not to think much but to love much, to love anyway, to keep showing up. And she also writes, "The Lord desires works." So in the context in the Interior Castle, she's not necessarily talking about charitable works. She is, though. That makes sense. But more so, she's talking about keep showing up. Remain in prayer when it feels useless. And when you remain in prayer even when it feels useless, that is a work of love. That is continuing to keep watch with Christ. But then, of course, we have Catherine of Sienna, and she describes this dryness, this distance very directly before John of the Cross in Dialogue. In her Dialogue, she says, "God withdraws consolation so that the soul may learn to love Him for Himself." So this is not punishment. This is maturation of the soul. Learning to love God for God's sake, not for our own. So if I were to meditate upon Gethsemane, I would probably sit with some of the things we discussed, things like how Christ knew everything would be okay when He felt sorrow anyway. Usually, I sit with that and I reflect upon the things in my life that are making me anxious, the things in my life that are causing me despair, so on and so forth. But using our mystical exegesis here, we must think, when I feel distance from God, do I think He's abandoning me, or is this just another opportunity for me to seek Him in new avenues? The soul grows up when it keeps showing up. And sometimes holiness begins when inspiration ends. And this is a very pivotal concept in Catholic spirituality. Of course, this is kind of like the dark night of the soul. We continue to show up even when we do not feel God. This is what we see in the Song of Songs. This is what we see with Magdalene at the tomb. I've already kind of gotten to that with the joyful mystery, so I won't repeat them here. But we often assume that if prayer feels bad, then something is wrong. But what if prayer feeling hard means something is right? It means that this is God maturing us or beckoning us up to go out and seek Him, to go out and begin that journey. The hard journey, the difficult journey, but a journey nonetheless. So those are some of the spiritual fruits that I would sit with. Am I avoiding something harder? I think it's very easy to blame God, right? God, why aren't you showing up? God, why aren't you here? I'm praying. Where are you? Maybe God's beckoning you somewhere. Or what I think is even more common is you're waiting for God in the booming voice. So you miss Him in the clouds, the trees, the birds, flowers, and so on. Because you're so attached to how you think God should work in your life that you miss the ways that He already is. So how am I listening for God? And is this dryness I feel an opportunity to love even more deeply?

Let's continue with the scourging at the pillar. Hello, lover of God. So, you're probably wondering if I have a written companion for these rosary reflections, and unfortunately, I do not. I am working on them, but unfortunately, the Lenten season is so incredibly busy, I probably won't have them available until after Easter or maybe Holy Week. But I do want to give you a written reflection for this series. So, if you are interested, please join me on Patreon as a free member. This will be free content, or please follow me on Substack. That way you will get an email when these reflections go out. Alternatively, if you are watching this in the future, uh, they will be added as a pinned comment. So hoping to get that to you in the coming weeks. God bless and back to the show.

So Jesus gives us consent in the garden, right? "Be it done unto Your will." And then He moves forward to the scourging at the pillar where He is stripped. His skin is torn open with the whips. So after consent comes purification. So scourging has always been symbolic of purification, of purging. And this tells us that after our consent to walk with Christ, the next step is removing illusions, to purge ourselves. Purge ourselves of the images that we hold for ourselves, the control that we think we possess, the identities that we build for safety. And sometimes this feels violent. Sometimes removing and purging ourselves of false self, ego, sinfulness, hatefulness, it feels violent. Habits fall away. Comforts disappear. False motivations are revealed. And you begin sometimes to see that even your holy actions were mixed. Even your holy actions might be rooted in ego, rooted in arrogance, rooted in control. You thought you were being loving, but you were just being controlling. You thought you were being a good Catholic, but you were just being a jackass. So, the scourging happens after consent. The false self strips away. Teresa of Avila warns that self-knowledge is essential. "Self-knowledge is so important that I would not have you neglect it for anything," she says in the Interior Castle. And also in the Catholic Church, we have the way to unite with God. Another teaching that it baffles me that you're not taught this in OCIA, lover of God, or homilies: the purgative way, the illuminative way, the unitive way. I hope at least you've heard me talk about it enough. My small, humble following, but I want more people to talk about it. So, what is this? The purgative way, that is stripping ourselves of sinfulness. The illuminative way, that's some kind of encounter. The unitive way, that is union with God. You see this at Mass. Mass starts with what? It starts with the Confiteor. The "I confess." "I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned." And then the priest gives you an absolution, purgation. And then you have an encounter with God. Did you know that you have an encounter with God every time you go to Mass? You encounter Him through the Word. Encounter Him through the Eucharist, too. We're getting there, though. You encounter Him first through the Word. The Word is the Word made flesh, made Word. So that illumination is the Gospel reading. The illumination is the homily. You are now illumined with God. And then what happens? You unite with God through the Eucharist. So this happens in our own personal prayer life. That's how many of the mystics talk about it. Purging ourselves of distraction, purging ourselves of ego, selfishness, of sin. Uh, purging ourselves of bad habits. Illumination, to many of the mystics and many of the saints, is things like meditation on Lectio Divina, meditating upon the mysteries of the rosary. It's also illumination. And then union might be a consolation in contemplative prayer. It might be a consolation. It might be an increased awareness of God in your life. That's what it should be. And that will happen the more you go to Him in contemplative prayer. The mystics say we cannot fully unite with God here on earth, but we can have foretastes of heaven. But I don't want to talk about experiences in prayer. What I want to talk about is I'm getting off track. Purgation. It starts with purging. Before we unite with God, we must purge ourselves. And sometimes it's also purging ourselves of things that we think are okay. Catherine of Sienna speaks of this purging as the destruction of self-love. "The soul must strip herself of disordered love of herself." Scourging is the stripping. It's not cruelty, it's preparation. And let me give your caveats because Catherine is saying don't. She's not saying hate yourself. She's saying when you put yourself above others, when you put your own needs before the needs of others, when you are only focused on oneself, when you are so attached to your own ideas, your own feelings, your own emotions, and you're no longer compassionate, you're no longer loving, so on and so forth. Okay? So, the scourging, this is not God trying to destroy you. This is God preparing you. He's revealing you in the false self, and that cannot survive real prayer. In purification, it hurts because illusions hurt when they break. So the scourging, we must ask ourselves, if I, when I meditate upon this, I ask myself, where are the false masks? Where am I being phony? Where am I being inauthentic? What is stopping me from revealing Christ to the world? What do I need to purge? What do I need to move away from? What are the uncomfortable truths that I am not facing right now? God does not wound us to shame us. He wounds us to make us real.

The Crowning with Thorns. And there are so many other little lines that I'd like to go back to if I was reflecting upon this. But again, trying to stick to another lane. Uh, my last episode on the joyful mysteries was over an hour. I also want to keep this a little shorter. Uh, but things like "Behold the Man," "Hail King," like things like that. So much mystical fruit that I think you can meditate upon. But here are the Crowning with Thorns. They mock Him, purple robe, reed and hand, kneeling in fake reverence, calling Him King. Thorns are driven into His head. Blood is mixing with laughter. So this stage is the social suffering. So scourging, purgation, that's the interior suffering. But now we are going to suffer exteriorly. We are going to suffer socially. People are going to judge us. They're going to reduce us. They're going to see us wrongly. Your spiritual life might make you seem strange. It might make you seem weak or naive. You might even be mocked by the people you love. So ego death fully happens here at the Crowning with Thorns, and this does not happen in private prayer. It happens in public perception. However, usually when we think of this, we think of, and even when I was speaking of it, this is where my mind went. We think of how we're going to be judged by non-Christians, non-Catholics. True. But I also want you to reflect upon how you are scared to change sometimes because you're worried about how your fellow Catholics will treat you. You feel like maybe you do need to speak out on this thing, but it goes against your politics. Zip. Don't want to cause any trouble. Might want to speak out on this, but it might lose me my tech company sponsorship. I might want to speak out on this, but I might not be invited to the conference as a speaker. Maybe I'm talking to fellow creators now, but I'm talking to you as well. You don't want to say this because your Catholic friends might look at you differently. You might be betraying your very core group of friends who believe a certain thing. You know, in your soul, you need to speak out against this thing. You need to talk about this thing. There are things that Catholics are doing that are wrong, but you're not going to talk about it. You don't want to be humiliated. You don't want to be outcast. You don't want to be laughed at. You don't want to be mocked. I think that's just as big of an issue as being mocked by the secular, being mocked by non-Catholics, non-Christians. I think we are often even more scared of being mocked by our own people. So, we don't speak out. We zip our lips when we shouldn't. So, that's another part of it. Are you willing? You gave your consent. You gave your consent. You've been scourged and purged. Now, are you willing to go out into the public and be perceived, even if you are mocked and laughed at? Catherine of Sienna, she talks about radical humiliation. "It is good to suffer for the truth." She says she constantly reminds her readers, her spiritual students, her spiritual children, that it's good to suffer for the truth, and that Christ was despised for it. Christ was despised. Therefore, His followers should not expect constant affirmation. And that's hard. I think we all crave affirmation. But sometimes it goes away. That's another garden moment. Teresa of Avila famously says, "What? Let nothing disturb you. God alone suffices." And usually, we kind of whitewash that, at least in context. We often read that as be happy, be joyful, happy, happy, joy, joy. And I think there's some truth to that. U, many people don't know Teresa of Avila. Very joyful saint, very happy saint, very socially adept saint. So, "Let nothing disturb you. God alone suffices." She's more so also she's more so well, also talking about don't let the haters get you down. Don't let the people that mock you, the people that spit at you, the people who do not understand you, don't let them disturb you. Don't let the darkness disturb you. And that's much more palatable when it's abstract. But what when, when you're realizing she's saying don't let it disturb you when the people you love are laughing in your face, when the people you love have turned their back on you, when you spoke out for something you believed in and now you don't have any friends anymore. Now you've lost revenue. Now you've lost your brand sponsorship. Now you've lost your viewers. Now you've lost your friends, your family, your loved ones. "God alone suffices." Little different then, isn't it? But it's real. It's gritty. It's raw. That's why I love Teresa of Avila. Reputation cannot be the anchor of the mystical life. It cannot be. Only truth, only love, only radiating Christ can. So God sometimes allows misunderstanding to free us from needing approval. The crown of thorns is the death of image. So much to reflect upon when we meet this mystery in the rosary. We reflect upon, am I being silent when I should be public? What crowns am I turning away? What am I doing that is people-pleasing that is going against my soul? Where can I be more courageous? The soul becomes royal when it no longer needs to be admired.

Do you guys like My Chemical Romance? Do you guys like, uh, Danger Days, their their album in which Gerard Way sings in the song "Na Na Na Na," he says, "Everybody wants to change the world. Everybody wants to change the world, but no one, no one wants to die." Or I guess we could quote Dorothy Day, who says, "Everyone wants revolution, but no one wants to do the dishes." But that is carrying the cross. Everyone wants the resurrection without the crucifixion. And that's what's going on here. Because the pathway towards God is not always ecstatic visions. It's not always consolation. Sometimes it's dust. It's crowds. It's weight. It's falling. It's standing again, falling again, getting back up. There's no mystical glow. There's just effort. There's just step after step carrying the cross to the point where it's just a phrase, right? "What is your cross?" "Your cross to bear." You know the symbolism here. It's it's in pop culture. It's in common lexicon. But we also know talk about this is the longest phase of the spiritual life in most cases. It's daily faithfulness. It's an invisible endurance. It's continuing to show up. Continuing to move forward when we are stripped. When we are still sore from the Crowning. When we are still beaten from the scourging. When we're still lonely and anxious from the garden, and we still got to walk. Work, family, illness, routine. It's not always dramatic suffering. Carrying the cross is not always dramatic suffering. Sometimes it's just a sustained burden. And that's where saints are formed, continuing to move forward. And I kind of want to focus on that a bit. The ordinariness, the ordinariness of the cross. We know the bad ones, the dark ones. And God bless you and keep you when He is walking alongside you when you're in my prayers. But there's smaller ones I think we overlook. Teresa of Avila emphasizes, "The Lord walks among the pots and pans." Holiness is forged in ordinary duties as well. Catherine of Siena, she calls perseverance the proof of love. If you want to prove that you love God, which you don't need to do, by the way, He knows what's in your heart. But if you want to make it an act, love proves itself in difficulty, in perseverance, in continued walking. And most sanctity does not look sexy or cinematic. Most sanctity looks pretty boring. It's just a continued carry, a continued step forward. You fall, you get back up. You fall again, you get up again. Endurance is mystical. Inconsistency is a form of heroism. So, there's two pathways here that I would recommend we reflect upon in this mystery. It's one, what are my ordinary crosses? What are my ordinary crosses? And I don't think you even need to take this into a dark path. What are the small things? We can get terrestrial with it. What are the small things in my life that are forging my holiness? You can call it the little way, call it the small crosses, whatever you want to call it. But then the other is how can I persevere, or more so, reflect upon the ways you already know you need to persevere and ask God to remind you that that is holiness, to continue you to move forward. Holiness is often just not quitting.

The final mystery, the Crucifixion of Our Lord. Nails, a sky darkening, a breath shortening. Mary standing, Jesus saying, "Father, forgive them." Saying, "It is finished. This is all gift. Nothing is held back." And this is union. Union is not escape from suffering. Union is transformation of suffering. It is allowing our suffering to become a gift. It's when the soul becomes capable of offering itself for others. This is not from a martyr complex. It's from love. You begin to love God in this phase of the soul. For God's sake, you begin to live for God. You begin to live for souls. We begin to live for truth. And this is mature mystical life. It's offering up our suffering. It's offering up our pain. And remember, as I said earlier, carrying a cross can be the small things, the small acts of charity, the small sacrifices, doing that for others as well. When we talk about redemptive suffering, which I kind of went over at the beginning of this episode, we often think about it as, "Oh, I'm suffering this big bodily pain. Let me use it as a prayer." Beautiful. That's part of it. Offering up a fast, doing things spiritually, but it's physical as well. It's also sacrificing your time, your energy, your money. Go and donate. Go and pick up a damn bowl of soup every now and then. Tying it back to Catherine of Sienna. Because in that moment, you're revealing the givingness of God. It's also St. Paul's theology of the mystical body, but sacrificing for others, a total self-gift. We are called to do that as well, to offer things up to others just like Christ did on the cross. Christ died incarnated and died to reveal the face of God to the world. Now you are called to reveal the face of the Son to the world. He incarnated to show God to everyone. Now you are called to show Christ to everyone through your actions, through your innermost being, through your sacrifices, through your cross in the sacrifice of your crucifixion. Catherine of Sienna famously says, "If you are what you should be, you will set the world on fire." I did an episode where I talk about how this is kind of taken out of context because usually it's like, find your vocation and life will be grand. She's talking about the mirror of the soul in the Dialogue. She's talking about going back to the imago Dei. Who are you meant to be? The image of God. You are meant to be a soul that reflects God to the world. So that's what she's saying. We must cleanse the mirror of our soul. That is who we are meant to be. And then we will set the world on fire through the magnification of our soul, which magnifies light unto fire. That's what Catherine means. And we do that. We cleanse the soul as we discussed through what? Through sacrifice, through acts of charity, through prayer, through redemptive suffering. But it comes from total surrender. It comes from that soul that does not think of itself because that soul does not think of itself or does not put itself first because it's been through the scourging, has been through the Crowning. Now it just reflects. Now it just mirrors. Now it lets God work through it. Teresa of Avila, at the height of her mysticism, she desires suffering for union. She says, "Lord, either let me suffer or let me die." And it's not because pain is good, but because she wants total participation. She wants to be so united to Christ that her pain is redemptive for others, that she can offer it up. So the goal is not to avoid suffering. The goal is to transfigure it spiritually or physically. Immature love becomes sacrificial. Immature love is controlling. Immature love is, "I want to control you. I want you to do this to make me feel better about myself." True love, mature love, you are willing to sacrifice it all for that person's well-being and happiness and in this case, salvation. And the cross is where we become gift. So one of the most beautiful, of course, the most mystical, the most traditional reflections is the crucifixion, where we ask ourselves, what am I offering up? What is my sacrifice? How can I be like Christ on the cross and offer my pain and suffering to the Father so that others will see His face? How am I revealing Christ to the world? How am I doing these things? And this leads to union. That is union. Union is not a feeling. Union is surrender. And Christ does not just die for us. He teaches us how to give ourselves. And the soul becomes most alive when it becomes an offering.

So that is the pathway of the soul. It's the arc of the soul. We start in the garden. We give our consent, even though when we don't want to. We give our consent in the darkness. And that consent leads to a purgation. That is the scourging at the pillar. We purge ourselves of ego, selfishness, sorrow, so on and so forth. And sometimes it is not beautiful. It is not easy. Sometimes we even do not initiate it ourselves. I would say often times we don't. But that's when we remove the falseness, the ego, the sinfulness. The Crowning of Thorns. That is when we are judged and mocked for living our authentic truth. And then we have Carrying the Cross. These are the sacrifices we make toward union. They're not always big. They're not always fireworks. Sometimes they're small. And then the Crucifixion. This is true union because now the soul is purely and thoroughly surrendered to God, and therefore everything is an offering. Our pain, our fear, our agony, we offer it up with Christ for the salvation of others. So we can reveal Christ to the world through our innermost being, both spiritually as well as physically. And unfortunately, what the sorrowful mysteries do not say happened next, Christ descends into hell. He descends into hell on the third day, right? He descends into darkness. He descends into the depths. He descends into hell. And He frees the souls that are trapped there. He frees the souls that are stuck in that hell. Sometimes it's called Abraham's bosom. Sometimes it's called Hades. Sometimes it's called the underworld. But the souls of Adam and Eve, Moses, Abraham, they were stuck there, and many more. And He goes to free them. And then He resurrects. That is our arc as well. After sacrifice, sometimes we descend into darkness. But guess who is there? Guess who is in darkness? Because He has defeated it. It's our Lord. He's right there with you in hell. He's right there with you in the depths. And just as He pulled Moses, Abraham, Adam, and Eve out of the depths, He's there with His hand outstretched to you as well, leading you up out of the tomb. Alleluia. Alleluia. Just as many times as you will be crucified, lover of God, you will resurrect because our Lord is walking alongside you.

So these have been the sorrowful mysteries. Thank you for sitting with me, for meditating with me, and spending time with me. Let's close it with an Ave Maria in Latin. Ave Maria. Amen. May God bless you and keep you and shine His face upon you. And tune in tomorrow for our next set of mysteries. God bless.