“Seven centuries before, it had been foretold that our Lord would be so wounded for our sins that we would have ‘thought Him as it were, a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted.’  The time has come for the fulfillment of that prophecy.  Omnipotence is bound to a pillar in the hour of His death, as He was bound in swaddling clothes in the hour of His birth.  The scourging at the pillar must have been terrible, because whenever our Lord foretold His passion, He always made particular reference to His scourging, as if to emphasize the outrage of His suffering.  St. Peter, after the Resurrection, recalling how he stood in the outer court listening to the fall of thongs upon His flesh, and yet heard our Lord not complain, wrote: ‘Who when He was reviled, did not revile; when He suffered, did not threaten.’  The scourging is an act of reparation for the excessive cult of the body.  ‘The body is for the Lord.’  In expiation for self-indulgence, His body, as the second Ark of the Covenant, is disclosed to profane eyes, as the Spouse of souls now becomes the plaything of mockers.  How many strokes He received, no one knows.  The prophet foretold that he would be so scourged that the bones of His body would be numbered.  We are saved by other stars and stripes than those on the flag; namely, by the stars and stripes of Christ, by whose stars we are illumined – by whose stripes we are healed.”  Archbishop Fulton Sheen (The Fifteen Mysteries)