Today, I would like to go over
The whole of John 19.
The verses that we have already read
we are not going to reread them
but I would like to make
some considerations, to
try to make a kind of synthesis.
We could say that the event
of the piercing of the heart of Jesus
is, for Saint John,
the pinnacle of revelation.
As the culmination
of his redemptive act.
And Father Glotin, a great Jesuit
who died in 2015,
used to say that
the episode of the pierced heart
is like a snapshot
of the whole redemptive act of Christ.
Indeed,
the spear pierces
the heart of Jesus and tears it.
It’s a real human heart.
And so
that is an overwhelming manifestation
of the mystery
of the incarnation.
So there the mystery of the incarnation
is present. The incarnation
by which the Son of God
wanted to join us. And just at the piercing
of his human heart.
The drops of blood
that spurt from his side
are the last
drops of the Passion.
This is the end point of the Passion.
He shed his blood and there
it ends there.
On the other hand,
with the water gushing out from the side,
we are projected into the future.
Water is the symbol of life,
water springs to give life
and therefore announces
the resurrection to us.
So, in this garden,
I told you a while ago,
that there was a garden,
where he had been crucified,
and whereas until now
we had mostly spoken of the skull, the Golgotha,
on the contrary . is rather deadly.
There, now, it is a question
of the garden and it is the water which will water,
fertilize this garden
of new youth
for an eternal life
and the water at the same time.
Announces the outpouring of the Holy Spirit,
and of Pentecost.
So the water projects us
to the resurrection,
and to Pentecost.
So this is what must be remembered.
It is the summary, like the snapshot,
the synthesis of all
the redemptive act of Christ, incarnation,
Passion, resurrection
outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost
To underline a little
this opinion,
or this conception according to which
the pierced heart is
the height of revelation.
The very pinnacle
of Christ’s redemptive act ,
I quote to you what Catherine of Siena
says in her dialogues.
You know she had dialogues
with our Lord, and then,
In one of these dialogues,
she asks Jesus the following question,
She said, Lord, Jesus,
you were already dead on the cross,
it was all over.
Why did you allow
your heart to be
cruelly pierced by the soldier’s spear?
And there she is obviously inspired by John,
John, 19.
She says everything was finished on the cross.
Jesus actually said ended.
So in fact she understood
well theologically that
when Jesus actually dies,
everything is finished,
everything is absolutely finished,
nothing is missing.
He gave his body,
he shed his blood,
he gives back the spirit and what is more
in Saint-Jean.
He gives us the Virgin Mary as mother.
So she says what’s the need?
What is the use ?
What is the meaning
of this additional event,
which occurs after death?
The piercing of the heart
and there Jesus said to her
The pains that I proved on the cross
and it is he who answers him: the pains
that I experienced
on the cross were limited.
Limited in time.
Maybe not limited in intensity,
but like every human being
when Jesus dies
it is the end of suffering
so he was limited on the cross
while my love for men
was infinite.
So I wanted my heart to be
opened like that.
My now open heart
could express to you my
infinite, boundless, inexhaustible love
better than a finite pain
could do , that
is to say finite
and limited in time,
limited by death, that
is the deep meaning.
The open heart of Jesus,.
Source: Fr. Kars