Meditation on the mystery of Christ’s suffering.

First time I heard somebody talk about meditating on divine mysteries, I didn’t understand what she was talking about. “She” was a Roman Catholic who was encouraging her fellow Catholics to do that… and I was a Protestant kid who was raised to believe Catholics are heretic. I definitely don’t believe that anymore, but at the time, I wasn’t inclined to give my Catholic sisters and brothers the benefit of the doubt: I was pretty sure she was talking about some weird spiritual practice that’d lead people astray.

Some of the problem—other than my anti-Catholic bias—is the fact the Protestants I worshiped with, didn’t understand what meditation is. They thought all meditation was the eastern type, practiced by Hindus, Buddhists, Transcendental Meditation, and various pagan religions: You clear your mind as much as possible, think about nothing, and see how long you can keep it up. Whereas meditation in the scriptures is all about filling our minds—with God. We think about him, and turn over in our minds all the stuff he’s revealed to us. Usually stuff from the scriptures. When that’s how you define meditation—and it’s supposed to be how we Christians define meditation—turns out my fellow Protestants do that a whole bunch! We just didn’t know to call it meditation. We let eastern pagans swipe the term right out from under us.

The other part of the problem is most Protestants didn’t know what mysteries are. To be fair, Catholics use the term far more often than Protestants—and define it biblically, and Protestants don’t. In the scriptures mystery means something we previously didn’t know, but thanks to Jesus, now we do. Biblical mysteries are mysteries solved. Revealed. No Christian who properly meditates on mysteries is thinking, as Sherlock Holmes might do, about something they can’t figure out, but hope to. Again, we’re thinking about stuff God’s revealed—usually in scripture.

Thing is, the non-biblical definition of “mystery” regularly makes Protestants balk at meditation. Look up “sacred mysteries” on the internet and you’ll find plenty of Protestants—and even some Catholics!—claiming these mysteries are “profound truths beyond human understanding.” No they’re not. They used to be beyond human understanding; the Holy Spirit figured humanity was ready for them, so Jesus revealed ’em and the apostles explained ’em. Meditation on them isn’t some weird intellectual exercise where we look into the void and hope it makes us deeper people. It’s getting to know God.

That said, let’s talk about what Catholics call the “sorrowful mysteries”—the stuff about Jesus’s suffering and death. During the Lenten season, and particularly Holy Week, Christians are regularly encouraged to meditate on how and why Jesus died. It’s not a mere martyrdom; Jesus wasn’t just meaninglessly killed by jealous and power-hungry people. I mean he was, but his death actually did something far more signficant than they realized at the time: It broke the hold of sin and death over our lives.

So, meditate on atonement and salvation.

How do we meditate on the mysteries of Jesus’s suffering and death? Do we just watch The Passion of the Christ again and weep so hard we can’t possibly eat popcorn? (Well, maybe you can’t.)

And yeah, that’s a popular way to contemplate Jesus’s death: Watch a passion play, or watch a Jesus movie which includes his passion, or listen to your preacher’s two-to-10-week series on the death of Jesus, or go through the stations of the cross. Or, which is probably the best way of doing it, you could read those stories in the gospels, read what the apostles said about those events, turn those thoughts over in your mind for a bit, and ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten you.

The apostles did say a bunch about it. Here’s a taste.

Hebrews 9.23-28 CSB

23Therefore, it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves to be purified with better sacrifices than these. 24For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with hands (only a model of the true one) but into heaven itself, so that he might now appear in the presence of God for us. 25He did not do this to offer himself many times, as the high priest enters the sanctuary yearly with the blood of another. 26Otherwise, he would have had to suffer many times since the foundation of the world. But now he has appeared one time, at the end of the ages, for the removal of sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27And just as it is appointed for people to die once—and after this, judgment— 28so also Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

Ephesians 5.2 CSB

…and walk in love, as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God.

Galatians 1.4 CSB

…who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.

1 Peter 3.18 CSB

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit…

1 John 3.16 CSB

This is how we have come to know love: He laid down his life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

There’s a lot more. Sometimes they go into detail, like the writer of Hebrews did; sometimes they just drop a one-liner here and there, like Paul did. Go dig around your New Testament; you’ll find more.

Then tink about the mysteries of Jesus’s suffering—the hidden things the Holy Spirit revealed to us Christians in the scriptures about what his suffering really means. Jesus used his suffering and death to atone for our sins, and save the world. It’s a good idea to think about how, in his suffering, he did that. How’d he take the great evil done to him, and use it for good?

And no, this doesn’t mean sit down and brainstorm ways this coulda happened. This means read your bible. Look it up, read it, memorize it, and mentally chew on it for a while. Think deeply about it.

You don’t have to do this during Lent and Holy Week, either. You can do it all year. You can do it for the rest of your life; it’ll take the rest of your life. But of course you first gotta get started.