We continue our meditation on John chapter 19.
Today, we will focus more on the blood and water that flow from the side of Jesus.
A soldier pierced his side and immediately blood and water gushed out.
And the tradition of the fathers of the Church sees in it the birth of the Church
at that time, it is the birth of the Church. Indeed, the Church is born from the open side of the new Adam. And the symbol of this birth is that blood and water symbolize
the 2 main sacraments.
The founding sacrament of baptism with water and the central and culminating sacrament,
center and summit of the life of the Church with the Eucharist, herefore symbolized here by blood.
Saint Paul says that Jesus is the new Adam. He speaks of it like that in the letter to the Romans,
then in the letter to the Ephesians, he tells us that the Church is the bride of Christ’s bride.
He unites with the Church. Like a husband to his wife. And so there is a nuptial dimension.
So the fathers of the Church, strong in all this contemplation, Say something very beautiful
that really makes us explore writing a little bit.
In fact, they say the Church is born from the side of the New Adam asleep on the cross,
asleep in death on the cross. Like the first woman, in chapter 2 of the book of Genesis,
the first woman was raised from the open side of the first, Adam. Asleep in the Garden of Genesis.
The first Adam on whom God ad made fall a torpor, a sleep, he opens the side to him
and from the open side he arouses the woman. And when he wakes up, the man
with this extraordinary exclamation. For once, “it’s the bone of my bones!” “and the flesh of my flesh.”
He could almost have added if one wants to be completely Christic:
“the blood of my blood.”
So it is always that the Fathers of the Church make this extraordinary analogy.
With Adam Eve, Adam asleep in the Garden of Eden, and the New Adam asleep on the cross.
And Eve, who is raised up from the first Adam and the Church as the bride of Christ
as the bride of the New Adam raised from the open side of Christ.
Which is extraordinary. but that, we are not going to read it today
but if you continue a little further to chapter 19 of Saint-Jean, especially at the time of the episode of the burial, you will see, there is nothing left to chance with Saint-John
Saint-Jean is a great theologian, a great exegete. Now he said at one time, in verse 41,
“Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified in that garden, a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. It is not at all for nothing. . does that mean there
the garden where Jesus will be buried, it’s like a new garden of Genesis.
a new birth a new Adam that arouses, which created somehow allows
to be created a new bride: the Church that was going to nourish us
and give us this time, Food for eternity.
No longer like the first Eve, who was called the mother of the living.
But unfortunately, as some fathers say. the Church, she unfortunately became the mother
of those condemned to death that we all are, without Salvation.
And there, on the contrary, therefore, the Church of course, with in the foreground the Virgin Mary, mother of the Church, most importantly, gives us nourishment from this new garden
for eternal life.
Source: Fr. Kars, https://www.sacrecoeur-paray.org/enseignements/4-juin/