The Church and the piercing of Christ's Sacred Heart
The Fathers saw in the blood and water from Christ’s side a profound mystery: the Church born from the New Adam, and the sacraments flowing from His Heart.
The Fathers saw in the blood and water from Christ’s side a profound mystery: the Church born from the New Adam, and the sacraments flowing from His Heart.
Editor’s Notes
As mentioned in the previous piece, 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.”
In this part, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How the water and blood from Christ’s side signify the birth and sanctification of the Church.
That this mystery is intimately linked to the sacraments and to the love of Christ for His Bride.
Why Saint John and Saint Paul both unveil the Church’s mystical origin in the crucified Lord.
He shows us that Christ’s Passion is not only redemptive, but nuptial and sacramental in its deepest meaning.
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
Contemplations of the Fathers
We all know that the contemplation which has been founded on this text of the Gospel by many place of the Fathers, which considers that the spiritual meaning applied to the flowing of the blood and water from the side of our Lord after His decease, by which it is considered that the two great sacraments are here represented, the one by the blood and the other by the water, is of very great authority and of great antiquity.
It certainly is evident here, from the language of St. John, that he considered the passage before us as something more than a bit of evidence to show that the particulars concerning the Passion had been carefully predicted beforehand. If this had been all, it may be supposed that the Evangelist would hardly have spoken in words so emphatic. And we must remember also that the Gospel of the Beloved Disciple is full of reference to the sacraments, and St. Chrysostom says:
‘We ought to receive the sacraments of the Church with as much eagerness and devotion as if they were actually flowing forth from out of the side of Christ to us. For the wound in the side of Christ was the door of the sacraments, since as Eve was drawn from the side of the first Adam, the Church was formed out of the side of the second Adam.’
St Paul to the Ephesians about the marriage tie—Union between Christ and the Church
We find that, when St. Paul comes,1 in his famous passage concerning the mutual duties of Christians, to speak of the reverence with which wives should regard their husbands, and the love with which husbands should regard their wives, he speaks in language which we can hardly understand, if we forget the strong reason which he seems to have for insisting on the holiness of the union and the sacramental import of the bond.
It is clear that his mind is full of the aspect of marriage which he calls a great mystery, as he says, in Christ and the Church, and we seem to see the explanation in the fact, if we are not mistaken, that he has for some time been dwelling upon the glorious image of the Church, which he has nowhere else spoken of in more glowing terms, and in particular, as the bride of Christ…
‘… from whom the whole body, compacted and fitly joined together by what every joint supplieth, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying itself in charity.’
After a time he comes to the duties of which we speak:
‘Let women be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord, because the husband is head of the wife as Christ is of the Church—He is the Saviour of the body. Therefore as the Church is subject to Christ, so let also the wives be to their husbands in all things.’
But the Apostle does not stop here, he has a great deal more to say about our Lord's love for the Church:
‘Christ also loved the Church, and delivered Himself up for it, that He might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life, that He might present it to Himself as a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but it should be without blemish.’
Then, after saying that ‘so ought men to love their wives as their own bodies, he that loveth his wife loveth himself, for no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, as also Christ doth the Church,’ and he continues still further, saying that the union between our Lord and ourselves is that strongest and most lasting of all, ‘Because we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones,’ and he finally quotes the text of Genesis:
‘For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh.’
This seems as forcible as it can be, but the Apostle seems to add something more to explain, perhaps, that he is speaking of that of which the marriage tie is the sacred symbol:
‘This is a great sacrament, but I speak in Christ and in the Church.’
If we ask ourselves how the Apostle comes to insist so strongly to the Ephesians on this doctrine concerning Christian marriage, it would seem as if he had seized this occasion of carrying out more fully his great teaching about the Church and her relation to our Lord, and the quotation from Genesis on the original institution of marriage seems to fall in with the ancient teaching of the closest possible union between our Lord and the members of His body, the Church, which is fully in keeping with the language of the Apocalypse about ‘the bride, the wife of the Lamb,’ which language seems to have been specially committed to the Evangelist whose words we are now illustrating, to bring forward to the Church of all time.
Malicious intention of the Jews turned to Christ’s glory
We have already seen how the design of the Jews, whether consciously or not, intended to lead to a kind of outrage on the lifeless Body of our Lord as He hung upon the Cross, issued in a sort of reverence being paid to Him, and in a great manifestation to the Church which venerates Him, which would not have taken place if there had been no thought of treating His sacred remains like those of a common criminal.
The intention of breaking His bones led to the piercing His side by the lance of Longinus, and that again led to the manifestation of the mysteries of the water and the blood which flowed from His pierced side, around which so fruitful has been the devotion which has entwined itself.
Thus in the short space of time which had elapsed since His expiration, there had been already some notable manifestations of the power of the crucified Lord.
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