Why did blood and water flow from the Sacred Heart of Jesus?
Saint John saw it with his own eyes—and stopped his Gospel to tell us so. The spear did not simply wound a dead body. It unveiled the Sacred Heart.
Saint John saw it with his own eyes—and stopped his Gospel to tell us so. The spear did not simply wound a dead body. It unveiled the Sacred Heart.
Editor’s Notes
The following text is Fr Coleridge’s commentary on the Gospel read on the feast of the Sacred Heart—as well as on that of the Precious Blood, which closely follows it.
In this part, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How the piercing of Christ’s side reveals a divine mystery hidden beneath the surface of the Gospel.
That this act after death confirms both his willing sacrifice and the supernatural origin of the Church.
Why Saint John interrupts his narrative to insist that he saw it—so that we might believe.
He shows us that the wound in Christ’s side is the visible opening of his Sacred Heart, from which flow the life-giving streams of grace.
In addition to its relevance for the Sacred Heart and the Precious Blood, this moment in the Gospel of St John is of immense importance for the Church. Pope Pius XII explains further in Mystici Corporis:
26. As We set out briefly to expound in what sense Christ founded His social Body, the following thought of Our predecessor of happy memory, Leo XIII, occurs to Us at once:
“The Church which, already conceived, came forth from the side of the second Adam in His sleep on the Cross, first showed Herself before the eyes of men on the great day of Pentecost.”
For the Divine Redeemer began the building of the mystical temple of the Church when by His preaching He made known His Precepts; He completed it when he hung glorified on the Cross; and He manifested and proclaimed it when He sent the Holy Ghost as Paraclete in visible form on His disciples. […]
28. That He completed His work on the gibbet of the Cross is the unanimous teaching of the holy Fathers who assert that the Church was born from the side of our Saviour on the Cross like a new Eve, mother of all the living.
“And it is now,” says the great St. Ambrose, speaking of the pierced side of Christ, “that it is built, it is now that it is formed, it is now that it is… molded, it is now that it is created... Now it is that arises a spiritual house, a holy priesthood.”
The Last Hours on Calvary
The Passage of Our Lord to the Father
Chapter XII
St. Matt. xxvii. 45-61; St. Mark xv. 33-47; St. Luke xxiii. 44-56; St. John xix. 28-42; Story of the Gospels, § 170, 171
Burns and Oates, London, 1892
The suggestion of the priests
The day which was now drawing to its close was the great day of the Parasceve, and we are following a very probable conjecture in thinking that the day following the Crucifixion was the great day of the Pasch itself.
This reason is given by St. John for the anxiety of the Chief Priests to have the traces of the late Crucifixion removed from the sight of men as soon as possible, and as it was not impossible that the sufferers, or some of them, might linger in life long enough to survive over the beginning of the Sabbath, when probably there would have been objections to the removal of the bodies from the Cross to the place of sepulture.
However that may have been, for we are not quite certain as to the Jewish customs as to all these matters, it would certainly have been most seemly to have our Lord and the others buried as soon as possible.
To prevent the chance of any survival into the Sabbath, the Chief Priests had a cruel suggestion ready, that the legs of the sufferers should be broken, and so all chance of life be destroyed. They made this suggestion to Pilate, who seems to have acquiesced at once. The remainder of the story may be told in the words of St. John:
‘Then the Jews, because it was the Parasceve, that the bodies might not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath-day, for that was a great Sabbath-day, besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. The soldiers, therefore, came, and they broke the legs of the first, and of the other that was crucified with Him.
‘But when they came to Jesus, and saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs, but one of the soldiers opened His side with a spear, and immediately there came out blood and water.
‘And he that saw it gave testimony, and his testimony is true, and he knoweth that he saith true, that you also may believe, for these things were done that the Scripture might be fulfilled, You shall not break a bone of Him. And another Scripture saith, They shall look on Him Whom they pierced.’
The testimony of St. John
It may be noticed that it is very seldom that St. John‚ or, indeed, any other of the Evangelists—breaks in, in this manner, upon the natural flow of the Gospel narrative to speak in his own person in reference to the work he has to do in giving his testimony.
We may certainly consider that his intention here is to give notice to his readers of the importance which he attaches to the facts here chronicled, and we find that from the earliest times of the Church, there has been evidence of the effect of the words of the Evangelist having been understood as the declaration of a great mystery, as will be presently mentioned.
Toletus tells us that there were three reasons why this wound of the lance was inflicted on our Lord after His death, instead of before it. In the first place, it might have been thought that this wound had brought about His death, and then it might have been argued that He had died in the common manner, not of His own free-will, as He said in the words already quoted, ‘That He had power to lay down His life, and power to take it up again.’
Another reason is to be found in the obvious purpose of instruction to the Church, which is shown by all that she has had to teach her children on the subject of the meaning of the water and blood which flowed now from the side of our Blessed Lord at this time, and which seem to have been chiefly in the mind of the Evangelist when he wrote the words about the object of his witness to the truth of the marvels here contained.
The third reason of Toletus for this mystery seems to be that the opening of the Kingdom of Heaven which followed on the death of our Lord, and could not take place without it, whereas it was at once opened in consequence of it, might be signified.
There is a great significance contained in these reasons, but we are unable at present to enter upon them with any fulness of commentary.
The opening of the side
The statement of St. John in the passage before us seems to contain two things—he tells us of the opening of the side of our Lord by the soldier, and of the coming out therefrom of the blood and water. The language he uses, ‘He that saw it gave testimony, and his testimony is true, and he knoweth that he saith true, that you also may believe,’ seems to show that the Evangelist understands that he had a very important truth to bear witness to, and one which, if accepted by the faithful, would lead to the establishment or confirmation of their faith in our Lord.
What St. John thought might be believed in consequence of the fact to which he witnesses, we are not told exactly, for he says that the fact proved the truth of the Scripture as to two facts, namely, that not a bone of our Lord, Who was represented by the paschal lamb, was to be broken, and that they should look on Him Whom they had pierced—a prophecy which referred to the piercing of the sacred side by the spear of Longinus.
These two prophecies and their fulfilment do not seem to have any direct bearing on that which seems to be the chief matter before the mind of the Evangelist, namely, the water and blood which he saw flow from the side which was wounded by the spear. No doubt there was a miracle in the fact that the water and blood flowed, as the Evangelist says, but the prediction does not touch that point.
Text about the three witnesses in Heaven
We must proceed to unite this text with another famous passage in the first Epistle of this same Apostle:
‘Who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? This is He that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not by water only, but by water and blood, and it is the Spirit which testifieth that Christ is the truth.
‘For there are Three Who give testimony in Heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these Three are One, and there are three that give testimony on earth, the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three are one.’1
It is beyond our present object to discuss at length the many questions which may be raised as to this celebrated passage, but it is at least clear that the reference in the text before us is very likely to have been suggested to the mind of the Apostle in his Epistle by the passage in the Gospel. It is thought that this first Epistle contains many marks of having been written at the same time with the Gospel, and some writers have even thought that the Epistle was meant as a kind of introduction to the larger work.
In each of them there is the same remarkable language about the water and the blood, and each text seems to refer to the same truth. The theologians who annotated the English Catholic New Testament, explain the passage in the Epistle thus:
‘That as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost all bear witness to Christ's Divinity, so the Spirit which He yielded up with a loud voice upon the Cross, and the water and blood which issued from His side, bear witness to His Humanity, and are one—that all agree to one testimony.’
But in light of all this, what was St John’s real purpose in “breaking the fourth wall” at this point, and precisely what was testified to by the blood and water flowing from Christ’s side?
This is the subject of the next part. Subscribe now to never miss an article:
The Last Hours on Calvary
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1 St. John v. 5, seq.
Oh, how profoundly beautiful!!!
So worthy of Supplicatio Quadraginta Horarum!!!
Thank you very very much this article!