Beauty in the ‘Crown of Thorns’

By Delia Chatoor

Many symbols are associated with the season of Lent and they include the cross, palms, nails, dry land, loaf of bread, a chalice, and thorns.

The thorns, therefore, may remind us of a plant found in most heat tolerant and dry locations known as the Crown of Thorns (Euphorbia milii). It produces small red flowers with very sharp, inch-long spikes.

Put together, the flowers could represent the Precious Blood of Jesus and the spikes, the “crown” which the Roman soldiers placed on His head following His arrest (Mt 27:27–30).

The plant is well known in the Holy Land so that it would have been easy to gather the boughs and plait them into a “crown”. Unfortunately, the soldiers were unaware that Jesus was indeed a King, not the military one the Jews were awaiting, but the true Messiah, the King of Kings.

That kingship, however, required no physical representation and was not of this world.

It may be difficult for us to grasp the physical, emotional, and spiritual trauma Jesus went through before and during His Passion. He nevertheless understood that as Son, He undertook to obey His Father, even to accepting death under cruel and inhumane conditions.

The season of Lent, therefore, affords us the opportunity to re-examine and refocus on what Jesus’ suffering was meant to achieve. He tried to explain to His disciples what His mission was: “I tell you most solemnly, unless a wheat grain falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest” (Jn 12:24).

Jesus was that grain of wheat and He was willing to be ridiculed and suffer physical abuse. The impaling of the “crown of thorns” was part of this, as was the placing above His head on the cross, the declaration of the charge against Him: “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.”

This mockery was the truth, and it is a reality which we could contemplate during Lent. Is Jesus my King?

We may not physically have a crown of thorns placed on our heads for our beliefs. There are, however, millions of Christians who are unable to give praise publicly to God.

Are we willing to bear witness to our Christian traditions where we are in the minority? Can we bear the pain wrought by “the thorns” of a materialistic world?

St Paul himself experienced some frustration in his mission which he described as “a thorn in the flesh” (2 Cor12:7–9). Whether this was an actual physical ailment or the interference “by a demon or by Satan”, he wanted release so that he could get on with his interaction with his community. It is possible that he used this challenge to turn to and depend more fully on the Lord for strength. Jesus Himself called on His Father through prayer and fasting to steel Himself for the trials to come. Can we use Lent to repudiate the wiles of the evil one who pokes at us to overwhelm our strength?

When next, therefore, we see the plant ‘The Crown of Thorns’, may we recognise the beauty of the red flowers and see them as the precious drops of the Blood of Christ Jesus which He willingly shed for us.

May we acknowledge the thorns as representing the pain experienced by Him through His holy Passion and together, they “opened for us, a living opening, through the curtain [of the sanctuary], that is to say, his flesh” (Heb 10:19–20). As the Father glorified His Son, so through Jesus we too can be glorified.

Delia Chatoor is a retired foreign service officer and a Lay Minister of the Our Lady of Perpetual Help, San Fernando Parish.