Lent

Here is a good lenten post to read.

Today, Ash Wednesday, marks the beginning of the penitential season of Lent. I plan to pray for all the blog readers here every day, and ask that you remember me, too, when you think of it, in your prayers.

Lent

What does it mean? Will you give up something? Add something to your spiritual routine? How will we prepare for Easter?

On Ash Wednesday, I was paradoxically at a Disney park in Florida. It was an odd day for fasting and abstinence (from meat). Standing in line for a park ride, we observed several people with ashy crosses on their foreheads, and felt a certain sense of communion with them. As we fasted, we noticed that there was food offered everywhere, to satisfy every whim.

But we also noticed that even in a place like that, one truly could fast. And think about fasting, in a different way than in a living room or office devoid of temptations.

As we choose something this lent, let's try to choose something other than what would be healthy for us anyway (no desserts or seconds, giving up chocolate) and think about what we can do that would be a true sacrifice. Many bloggers give up blogging. Sometimes that's about making room for other things, sometimes its about breaking an addiction, sometimes its about taking a breather from it. Maybe it is a true sacrifice for some people.

A true sacrifice. What is that? Let's contemplate that as the Lenten season begins.

And if you haven't read this yes, I do recommend it.

The Greatest Detective Story of All

The Mystery of Christ on the Cross. I hope today brings you peace, and helps you draw closer to Christ.

Thursday--Holy Thursday--Dr. Thursday

You may have wondered how I was going to handle this post, since I had already treated the five Sorrowful Mysteries. But today, Holy Thursday, the Fifth Luminous Mystery shold be contemplated. Yes, there must be those horrid last few notes to end one part of the Mysterious Suite (a descending pedal solo, played on a 32' flue, perhaps) as Judas leaves, signifying "It was night".

But just as there are other ways and others days in which we shall ponder this mystery - I mean the post-Pentecost feast of Corpus Christi, and September's Exaltation of the Cross - just so there must also be another theme to our suite, something old and exalted, solemn and homely, but also new...
Read more.
Yes, as the Good Steward who brings forth old and new, or St. Augustine's "Beauty": for today, on Spring's first Full Moon, on this feast day of the Old Covenant, the One Who commanded Moses now gives a new command: "this is the New Covenant, in My Blood..."

Here again is the Sacrifice and Holy Meal, and the Blood which liberates, but now the Priest is also the Victim.

Our Uncle Gilbert speaks of this great mystery with a large amount of care:

On an occasion when Holy Communion was brought to Frances at home he said, "I am a simple man and I am afraid when God comes to my house." [Ward, Return To Chesterton 293]

Something so amazing would clearly bring forth whole books from his prolific pen, but he knows that these words are the Division which Jesus brought. [see Lk 12:51] For when He told the Jews in six different ways how they would be obliged to eat His flesh and drink His blood, "many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him." [Jn 6:67] Here is one example, from his essays on Catholicism:

As to Transubstantiation, it is less easy to talk currently about that; but I would gently suggest that, to most ordinary outsiders with any common sense, there would be a considerable practical difference between Jehovah pervading the universe and Jesus Christ coming into the room. [GKC The Thing CW3:180]

But in his fiction he is far more bold:

"I want you to hate me! " cried Turnbull, in agony. "I want you to be sick when you think of my name. I am sure there is no God."
"But there is," said Madeleine, quite quietly, and rather with the air of one telling children about an elephant. "Why, I touched His body only this morning."
"You touched a bit of bread," said Turnbull, biting his knuckles. "Oh, I will say anything that can madden you!"
"You think it is only a bit of bread," said the girl, and her lips tightened ever so little.
"I know it is only a bit of bread," said Turnbull, with violence.
She flung back her open face and smiled. "Then why did you refuse to eat it?" she said. [GKC, The Ball and the Cross]

Of all the fiction of GKC, somehow that book seems the most appropriate for today. True, the famous picnic on the roof in Manalive has some resonance... and the grand theater as Lucian Gregory comes before the Council of the Seven Days...

But tomorrow is the paradoxical "feast day" of the Cross, and we must "enter into" that symbol, as much as Bastian Balthazar Bux enters into "Auryn" in The Never-Ending Story. For us, the Eucharist makes this possible: we enter into, and partake of, Calvary - which means the Cross.

I heard somewhere how the U.S. Army changed the boot-soles for those going to the Near East, as the old form of treads would leave the ground marked with signs of the cross. One wonders about such a view - is the ASCII character 00101011 (which looks like this: "+") likewise forbidden? Are draftsmen forbidden T-squares? Are geometers prevented from using angles measuring pi over 2? Are no picket fences permitted? Is star-gazing shunned when Cygnus (the "Northern Cross") is in the sky?

But Chesterton has a whole chapter exploring, and answering, this riddle. Here is just a sample:

[Professor Lucifer said] "What could possibly express your philosophy and my philosophy better than the shape of that cross and the shape of this ball? This globe is reasonable; that cross is unreasonable. It is a four-legged animal, with one leg longer than the others. The globe is inevitable. The cross is arbitrary. Above all the globe is at unity with itself; the cross is primarily and above all things at enmity with itself. The cross is the conflict of two hostile lines, of irreconcilable direction. That silent thing up there is essentially a collision, a crash, a struggle in stone. Pah! that sacred symbol of yours has actually given its name to a description of desperation and muddle. When we speak of men at once ignorant of each other and frustrated by each other, we say they are at cross-purposes. Away with the thing! [see Jn 19:15] The very shape of it is a contradiction in terms."

"What you say is perfectly true," said Michael, with serenity. "But we like contradictions in terms. Man is a contradiction in terms; he is a beast whose superiority to other beasts consists in having fallen. That cross is, as you say, an eternal collision; so am I. That is a struggle in stone. Every form of life is a struggle in flesh. The shape of the cross is irrational, just as the shape of the human animal is irrational." [GKC, The Ball and the Cross]

Indeed, we DO like contradictions in terms. Such is the whole story of the Incarnation:

...in this case [of Bethlehem] it is rather heaven that is under the earth. And there follows in this strange story the idea of an upheaval of heaven. That is the paradox of the whole position; that henceforth the highest thing can only work from below. [Cf Jn 13:2-15] ... For those who think the idea of the Crusade is one that spoils the idea of the Cross, we can only say that for them the idea of the Cross is spoiled; the idea of the Cross is spoiled quite literally in the Cradle. [GKC, The Everlasting Man CW2:313-4

Let us give Madeline, the heroine of The Ball and the Cross, the last word today, for her words give an almost Thomistic summary of today's Mystery:

"...the Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God. ...if you are really sorry it is all right. If you are horribly sorry it is all the better. You have only to go and tell the priest so and he will give you God out of his own hands."

Dr. Thursday

Thursday's Dr. Thursday Post

The Fifth Sorrowful Mystery: the Crucifixion.

Last week, when I had a spare moment, I had planned to give another cheat sheet and tell you where the "Seven Last Words" are to be found, so I will.

1. And Jesus said: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. But they, dividing his garments, cast lots. [Lk 23:34]

2. And [the thief] said to Jesus: Lord, remember me when thou shalt come into thy kingdom. And Jesus said to him: Amen I say to thee: This day thou shalt be with me in paradise. [Lk 23:42-43]

3. When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the disciple standing whom he loved, he saith to his mother: Woman, behold thy son. After that, he saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own. [John 19:26-27]

4. Afterwards, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, said: I thirst. [John 19:28]

5. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying: Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani? That is, My God,My God, why hast thou forsaken me? [Mt 27:46, Mk 15:34]

6. Jesus therefore, when he had taken the vinegar, said: It is consummated. And bowing his head, he gave up the ghost. [Jn 19:30]

7. And Jesus crying with a loud voice, said: Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. And saying this, he gave up the ghost. [Lk 23:46]

And I had thought to write more - but I cannot. No one can.

Rather, we ought to read the Gospels - or, take advantage of some high-technology and use the "Hand-Held Gospels" called the Rosary - meanwhile, meditating carefully about what happened. (But see my comments last week about that very crucial word.)

But at least we ought to read what Chesterton said, in some of the most powerful words ever written about this scene.
--Dr. Thursday

Read more.Is there any need to repeat and spin out the story of how the tragedy trailed up the Via Dolorosa and how they threw him in haphazard with two thieves in one of the ordinary batches of execution; and how in all that horror and howling wilderness of desertion one voice spoke in homage, a startling voice from the very last place where it was looked for, the gibbet of the criminal; and he said to that nameless ruffian, “This night shalt thou be with me in Paradise”? [cf. Lk 23:43] Is there anything to put after that but a full-stop? Or is any one prepared to answer adequately that farewell gesture to all flesh which created for his Mother a new Son? [cf. Jn 19:26]

...in that scene were symbolically gathered all the human forces that have been vaguely sketched in this story. As kings and philosophers and the popular element had been symbolically present at his birth, so they were more practically concerned in his death; and with that we come face to face with the essential fact to be realised. All the great groups that stood about the Cross represent in one way or another the great historical truth of the time; that the world could not save itself. Man could do no more. Rome and Jerusalem and Athens and everything else were going down like a sea turned into a slow cataract. Externally indeed the ancient world was still at its strongest; it is always at that moment that the inmost weakness begins. But in order to understand that weakness we must repeat what has been said more than once; that it was not the weakness of a thing originally weak. It was emphatically the strength of the world that was turned to weakness, and the wisdom of the world that was turned to folly.

In this story of Good Friday it is the best things in the world that are at their worst. That is what really shows us the world at its worst. It was, for instance, the priests of a true monotheism and the soldiers of an international civilisation. Rome, the legend, founded upon fallen Troy and triumphant over fallen Carthage, had stood for a heroism which was the nearest that any pagan ever came to chivalry. Rome had defended the household gods and the human decencies against the ogres of Africa [that is, Carthage] and the hermaphrodite monstrosities of Greece. But in the lightning flash of this incident, we see great Rome, the imperial republic, going downward under her Lucretian doom. Scepticism has eaten away even the confident sanity of the conquerors of the world. He who is enthroned to say what is justice can only ask, “What is truth?” [”He” is Pontius Pilate. Jn 18:38] So in that drama which decided the whole fate of antiquity, one of the central figures is fixed in what seems the reverse of his true rôle. Rome was almost another name for responsibility. Yet he stands for ever as a sort of rocking statue of the irresponsible. Man could do no more. Even the practical had become the impracticable. Standing between the pillars of his own judgment-seat, a Roman had washed his hands of the world. [Mt 27:24]

There too were the priests of that pure and original truth that was behind all the mythologies like the sky behind the clouds. It was the most important truth in the world; and even that could not save the world. Perhaps there is something overpowering in pure personal theism; like seeing the sun and moon and sky come together to form one staring face. [Cf. “A few clouds in heaven do come together into the staring shape of one human eye.” FB “The Blue Cross” in The Innocence of Father Brown] Perhaps the truth is too tremendous when not broken by some intermediaries, divine or human; perhaps it is merely too pure and far away. Anyhow it could not save the world; it could not even convert the world. There were philosophers who held it in its highest and noblest form; but they not only could not convert the world, but they never tried. You could no more fight the jungle of popular mythology with a private opinion than you could clear away a forest with a pocket-knife. [Cf. Cardinal Newman: “Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk; then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man.” The Idea of a University] The Jewish priests had guarded it jealously in the good and the bad sense. They had kept it as a gigantic secret. As savage heroes might have kept the sun in a box, they kept the Everlasting in the tabernacle. They were proud that they alone could look upon the blinding sun of a single deity; and they did not know that they had themselves gone blind. Since that day their representatives have been like blind men in broad daylight, striking to right and left with their staffs, and cursing the darkness. [cf. Jn 12:35 ???] But there has been that in their monumental monotheism that it has at least remained like a monument, the last thing of its kind, and in a sense motionless in the more restless world which it cannot satisfy. For it is certain that for some reason it cannot satisfy. Since that day it has never been quite enough to say that God is in his heaven and all is right with the world; [From Browning's Pippa Passes, line 227; GKC comments in ILN Nov 22, 1930 CW35:415] since the rumour that God had left his heavens to set it right.

And as it was with these powers that were good, or at least had once been good, so it was with the element which was perhaps the best, or which Christ himself seems certainly to have felt as the best. The poor to whom he preached the good news, [cf. Lk 4:18 and 7:22] the common people who heard him gladly, [cf. Mk 12:37] the populace that had made so many popular heroes and demigods in the old pagan world, showed also the weaknesses that were dissolving the world. They suffered the evils often seen in the mob of the city, and especially the mob of the capital, during the decline of a society. The same thing that makes the rural population live on tradition makes the urban population live on rumour. Just as its myths at the best had been irrational, so its likes and dislikes are easily changed by baseless assertion that is arbitrary without being authoritative. Some brigand or other was artificially turned into a picturesque and popular figure and run as a kind of candidate against Christ. [Jn 18:39-40] In all this we recognise the urban population that we know, with its newspaper scares and scoops. But there was present in this ancient population an evil more peculiar to the ancient world. We have noted it already as the neglect of the individual, even of the individual voting the condemnation and still more of the individual condemned. It was the soul of the hive; a heathen thing. The cry of this spirit also was heard in that hour, “It is well that one man die for the people.” [Jn 11:50-51] Yet this spirit in antiquity of devotion to the city and to the state had also been in itself and in its time a noble spirit. It had its poets and its martyrs; men still to be honoured for ever. It was failing through its weakness in not seeing the separate soul of a man, the shrine of all mysticism; but it was only failing as everything else was failing. The mob went along with the Sadducees and the Pharisees, the philosophers and the moralists. It went along with the imperial magistrates and the sacred priests, the scribes and the soldiers, that the one universal human spirit might suffer a universal condemnation; that there might be one deep, unanimous chorus of approval and harmony when Man was rejected of men. [cf. Is 53:3]

There were solitudes beyond where none shall follow. There were secrets in the inmost and invisible part of that drama that have no symbol in speech; or in any severance of a man from men. Nor is it easy for any words less stark and single-minded than those of the naked narrative even to hint at the horror of exaltation that lifted itself above the hill. Endless expositions have not come to the end of it, or even to the beginning. And if there be any sound that can produce a silence, we may surely be silent about the end and the extremity; when a cry was driven out of that darkness in words dreadfully distinct and dreadfully unintelligible, which man shall never understand in all the eternity they have purchased for him; and for one annihilating instant an abyss that is not for our thoughts had opened even in the unity of the absolute; and God had been forsaken of God. [Mt 27:46, quoting Ps 21:2]

[GKC, The Everlasting Man CW2:341-4]

Dr. Thursday's Thursday Post

Is there any need to repeat and spin out the story of how the tragedy trailed up the Via Dolorosa and how they threw him in haphazard with two thieves in one of the ordinary batches of execution...?
[GKC, The Everlasting Man CW2:341]

Today's subject is the Fourth Sorrowful Mystery, Jesus Carries the Cross. This mystery summarizes the events covered in another popular devotion, the Stations of the Cross - specifically from the Second to the Ninth inclusive. If you have the third volume of Chesterton's Collected Works, you have GKC's own consideration of that devotion, actually his comments about the artwork for the Stations done by William Frank Brangwyn.

But first, I ought to mention something which may come as a bit of a surprise. Read more.Most of the scenes pictured so vividly in these Stations are simply traditional, and are not a literal part of the Gospels. You may want to get out your Bible and check, but here's a handy chart just for reference:

Station 1. Pilate condemns Jesus to death. Mt 27:26, Mk 15:15, Lk 23:24-25, Jn 19:16
Station 2. Jesus takes up His cross. Mt 27:31, Jn 19:17
Station 3. Jesus falls the first time.
Station 4. Jesus meets His sorrowful Mother.
Station 5. Simon of Cyrene helps carry the cross Mt 27:32, Mk 15:21, Lk 23:26
Station 6. Jesus falls the second time.
Station 7. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus.
Station 8. The women of Jerusalem weep over Jesus. Lk 23:27-31
Station 9. Jesus falls the third time.
Station 10. Jesus is stripped. Mk 15:24
Station 11. Jesus is crucified (nailed to the cross). Mt 27:35, Mk 15:27, Lk 23:33, Jn 19:18

That's right. There is no record of Stations 3, 4, 6, 7, 9 in the gospels.

An aside: Yes, I am aware that there have been both "contracted" and "extended" versions of the Stations in the past. But that's going too far afield for my purpose today.

And yet that does not mean these things did not happen! After all, we are meditating, which in OUR tradition means a conscious, full and complete engagement of our mental faculties. Our imagination must play its part, not in "fantasizing" or concocting fiction, but in making present to us an image of a long-past reality. (That's why it is called IMAGE-ination!)

I have said this in some detail, because there is one item in particular which is NOT in the Gospels, but IS in the Stations (and hence in the 4th Sorrowful Mystery) - an item which our Uncle Gilbert calls attention to. You may find it a bit disturbing to read, no, not because of its - uh - medical detail, but because of its dramatic human insight. I have heard it said that Dr. Barbet, the "Surgeon at Calvary," wept bitterly when he would see a crucifix, pondering its medical facts of which he could see so much. The quote I will offer is not like that. It is the deep mystical thought of an incredibly powerful writer and literary critic, who, as usual, can read plainly what so many others miss. I shall only be sorry if it does NOT move you. Rather, like his powerful words in The Everlasting Man, it should make you want to read the original story with a newly opened heart:

If the Gospel description of the Passion of Jesus Christ is not the record of something real, then there was concealed somewhere in the provinces ruled by Tiberius a supremely powerful novelist who was also, among other things, a highly modern realist. I think this improbable. I think that if there had been such a uniquely realistic romancer, he would have written another romance, with the legitimate aim of money; instead of merely telling a lie, with no apparent aim but martyrdom. We hear much in modern times of a realism which is apparently flattered by being called ruthless. I cannot say, as a matter of individual taste, that I am much more attracted to ruthlessness as a virtue of German novelists than of American millionaires. But if ever realism could be called ruthless, and ruthlessness could be called right, it is in the rending story of insult and injustice that has been imbodied in the Stations of the Cross. Christians are enjoined to think about it; but I must confess that I simply have not the courage to write about it. It is rather too real, or realistic, for one commonly in contact with the milder modern realism. Anything so grim in every detail as that would be recognised as beating all the moderns at their own game, if only it had been on what is called the modern side. Details like the repeated failure to carry the Cross have an inhuman horror of humiliation, that would make the fortune of a modern novelist writing on concentration camps to prove there is no God, instead of writing to prove that a God so loved the world.
[GKC, The Way Of The Cross (comments on the art of William Frank Brangwyn) in CW3:541-2]

An afterword - or two. I ought not add anything, except please go read these GKC works, and also the Gospels themselves. But I do want to mention two things about two other stations.

1. It is said that "Veronica" is a pun, possibly referring to the Shroud - or possibly to a real image made by a real woman. But the pun is that the name means the True Image, not the woman! (Remember, we're using our IMAGination, part of our divinely given powers of mind, to SEE more of this mystery.)

2. For some years my local parish has been serving a Vietnamese population in our town. I have delighted in the opportunity to have even a slight contact with an oriental tongue which has virtually nothing in common with any European language! Fascinating. One of the most inspiring details I learned was their title for the Fourth Station, roughly:

Her Majesty the Mother Mary meets His Majesty the Lord Jesus carrying the Holy Cross.

One more thing. An untranslatable pun occurs here: the word for "Cross" also means "price"...

Lay Chua! Xin Chua! Thuong xot chung con!
Oh Lord! We beg You Lord! Have mercy on Your many children!

Thursday's Post

As last week we considered the Scourging, so this week we consider the
Crowning with Thorns. [See Mt 27:28-31, John 19:2-3]

Again, we must state that GKC barely touches this scene directly, but
his indirect comments are very rich and moving. In this particular scene
of mockery, one is reminded of our Lord's humility, set against our
sinful pride. Perhaps no single essay of GKC is more important for us in
this regard than his "If I Had But One Sermon To Preach" in The
Common Man, which unfortunately is too long to post here.
But it is a favourite topic. Long before his conversion, he had this to
say:

Humility is so practical a virtue that men think it must
be a vice. Humility is so successful that it is mistaken for pride. It
is mistaken for it all the more easily because it generally goes with a
certain simple love of splendour which amounts to vanity. Humility will always, by preference, go clad in scarlet and gold; pride in that which refuses to let gold and scarlet impress it or please it too much. In a word, the failure of this virtue actually lies in its success; it is too successful as an investment to be believed in as a virtue. Humility is not merely too good for this world; it is too practical for this world; I had almost said it is too worldly for this world. ...Now, one of these very practical and working mysteries in the Christian tradition, and one which the Roman Catholic Church, as I say, has done her best work in singling out, is the conception of the sinfulness of pride. Pride is a weakness in the character; it dries up laughter, it dries up wonder, it dries up chivalry and energy. The Christian tradition understands this... [GKC Heretics CW1:72, 107]

A bit later, in his incomparable glimpse into what should be called "the Philosophy of the Story", he wrote:

There is the chivalrous lesson of "Jack the Giant Killer"; that giants should be killed because they are gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against pride as such. [GKC Orthodoxy CW1:253

But does this relate to our mystery? Yes, and here is why.

Read more.

Because in pride we are dealing with the falsehood called a mockery: it is an affront to a Person, and hence even to an image. Remember Genesis 1:27? "And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them."

In mocking the God-Man, the Romans mocked Man also:

For religion all men are equal, as all pennies are equal, because the only value in any of them is that they bear the image of the King. [GKC Charles Dickens CW15:44]
This is no place to expound a philosophy; it will be enough to say in passing, by way of a parable, that when we say that all pennies are equal, we do not mean that they all look exactly the same. We mean that they are absolutely equal in their one absolute character, in the most important thing about them. It may be put practically by saying that they are coins of a certain value, twelve of which go to a shilling. It may be put symbolically, and even mystically, by saying that they all
bear the image of the King. And, though the most mystical, it is also the most practical summary of equality that all men bear the image of the King of Kings. Indeed, it is of course true that this idea had long underlain all Christianity, even in institutions less popular in form than were, for instance, the mob in mediaeval republics of Italy. A dogma of equal duties implies that of equal rights. I know of no Christian authority that would not admit that it is as wicked to murder a poor man as a rich man, or as bad to burgle an inelegantly furnished house as a tastefully furnished one. But the world had wandered further and further from these truisms, and nobody in the world was further from them than the group of the great English aristocrats. The idea of the equality of men is in substance simply the idea of the importance of man. [GKC A Short History of England 147]

If any modern man should say, “You make too much of the sufferings of
Jesus of Nazareth,” it is a strictly logical answer to say, “It might or
might not be too much for the sufferings of Jesus of Nazareth; it is not
too much for the sufferings of Jesus Christ.” If his theory were
true, that Jesus was not merely a human being but almost a historical
accident, then indeed we might seem to be making too prolonged a
lamentation over such an accident. But if our theory is true,
that it was not an accident, but a divine agony demanded for the
restoration of the very design of the world, then it is not in the least
illogical that the lamentation (and the exultation) should last as long
as the world. The sceptic, who is also the sentimentalist, is engaged in
his usual game of arguing in a circle; he is merely saying that if the
Passion was what he thinks it was, it is very wrong of us to treat it as
what we think it was. Certainly, if Christ was not of the very substance
of omnipotence, it becomes relatively pointless to point to the paradox
of his impotence. But we do not necessarily admit we are wrong, merely
because our version of the story is the only version that gives it a
point. That there has been a dreadful and even deadly insistence upon
that point is perfectly true, and for us perfectly consistent; there has
been an everlasting energy in driving in that point; in pressing upon it
as upon the thorns; in hammering at it as at the nails. But we are not
bound to consider the critic who is merely annoyed by the hammering or
puzzled by the pressure, without even seeing the point.
[GKC The Way of the Cross CW3:548-549]

Perhaps this
is the most American of the Mysteries: the first of the famous
self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence ought to bring
this image to our thoughts. Yes, here, our own scalps were torn, our
faces were struck, we were spit on. We deserve it for our pride, but in
His humility He accepted it so we would be spared - if we follow His
Way. It's up to us who "bear the image of the King" - even in America.

Thursday Post

In our Lenten journey toward the Skull-Hill we are conducting a
Chestertonian review of the Sorrowful Mysteries, following Jesus in His
last hours on earth. It is humbling to attempt such a study, for even
those of us who claim that GKC wrote about everything can find it
difficult when the focus is placed on things which (one guesses) GKC
preferred not to explore. True, he wrote a 12 page commentary on
Brangwyn's art for the Stations of the Cross, which you can find in CW3
- but the Stations only begin with "Pilate Condemns Jesus to Death"
whereas the first three Sorrowful Mysteries precede that Station.

So I have to disappoint you a little. I have not been able to find GKC
speaking specifically about this particular scene. Frankly, it is not
unexpected - all throughout the above-mentioned comments on the Stations
- and even when we come to the Crucifixion - GKC preserves a certain
reticence. As I quoted last week, "of what use are words about such
words as these?"

But I shall offer two short excerpts from his masterwork of masterworks,
mentioning scenes somewhat adjacent chronologically to the Scourging,
which I think may help us ponder a little more of what was going on at
that time:

As the High Priest asked what further need he had of witnesses, we might
well ask what further need we have of words. Peter in a panic repudiated
him: and immediately the cock crew, and Jesus looked upon Peter, and
Peter went out and wept bitterly. Has anyone any further remarks to
offer?
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:341]

When Jesus was brought before the judgment-seat of Pontius Pilate, he
did not vanish. It was the crisis and the goal; it was the hour and the
power of darkness. It was the supremely supernatural act of all his
miraculous life, that he did not vanish.
[ibid CW2:340]