The sorrowful mysteries, meditated on during the prayer of the Rosary, retrace the agony and passion of Christ, until his crucifixion. They are traditionally prayed on Tuesday and Friday. These events in the life of Jesus, which we are invited to contemplate through the eyes of Mary with the rosary, help us to enter into one of the great Christian mysteries: the cross.
(Find the list of the other mysteries of the Rosary: the joyful mysteries, the luminous mysteries and the glorious mysteries)
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Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled.
Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:36 -39)
So, Pilate released Barabbas to them. But he had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified. (Matthew 27:26)
Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him,
and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand. Then they knelt in front of him and mocked him. “Hail, king of the Jews!” they said. (Matthew 27:27 -29)
“They forced a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus, who was coming from the country, to carry his cross. They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means ‘the place of the skull’).” (Mark 15:21-22)
When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. (Luke 23:33)
“It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two.
Jesus called out with a loud voice, 'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.' When he had said this, he breathed his last.” (Luke 23:44-46)
(Discover the 7 words of Jesus on the cross)
Whether during Holy Week, by reciting the rosary, by meditating on Friday, meditating on the last hours of Jesus plunges us back into this crazy love of God for mankind.