“As the scourging was the reparation for the sins of the flesh, so the crowning with thorns was the atonement for the sins of the mind – for the atheists who wish there were no God, for the doubters whose evil lives becloud their thinking, for the egotists, centered on themselves.  The soldiers cursed as the thorns pricked their fingers.  Then they cursed the Lord, as they drove the crown of thorns into His head, as a mockery of a royal diadem.  Into His hands they placed a reed, the symbol of His kingdom, presumed to be false and unstable like the reed.  His flesh, already hanging from Him like purple rags, is now covered with a purple robe to ridicule His claim to kingship of hearts and nations.  Blindfolding Him, they struck Him, asking Him to prophesy, or tell whom it was that delivered the blow.  They then bowed down before Him in mock reverence, spitting in His face, that all the subsequent Mindszentys, Stepinacs, and martyrs of the world might have courage in their hour of martyrdom.  In this Mystery is verified the truth of our Saviour’s warning: ‘If the world hates you, be sure that it hated Me before it learned to hate you.  If you belonged to the world, the world would know you for its own and love you; it is because you do not belong to the world, because I have singled you out from the midst of the world, that the world hates you.’  He who expects to preserve His faith without being mocked by the world is either weak in it, or else not so bold in goodness as to draw upon himself the mocking insults of another purple robe and a torturing circle of thorns.”   Archbishop Fulton Sheen (The Fifteen Mysteries)