. . . one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. . . . And . . . scripture says, “They shall look on Him whom they have pierced.”
-Jn 19:34, 37
Jesus now hangs dead upon His Cross. No sooner had He breathed His last than there occurred a groundswell of earthquake. The veil in the Temple behind Him is riven, while before Him the late afternoon sun recovers its light.
And in that unearthly light the Cross is revealed—with its sweet Burden—in perfect peace. Dum volvitur mundus, Crux stat. And now, in this setting occurs the final and supreme revelation of Our Lord’s Passion: the revelation of His Sacred Heart.
This is the divinely chosen symbol of what had caused His death. As anticipated in Gethsemane, before any hand had touched Him, the Heart of Jesus ruptured from within. (Longinus’s lance was but the instrument releasing a pent-up flood.) Christ’s love for His Father and for us cannot be contained. From the moment of His death and forever, His Heart’s love has a threefold witness: the Spirit, the water, and the blood (cf. 1 Jn 5:8).
This witness from the height of the Cross is now registered by earthly witnesses. There is the sworn witness of St. John (Jn 19:35), but before and after it there is the all-enveloping witness of Our Lady. Closest to Jesus at His death, as at his birth, is His Mother.
And after His death, the immemorial tradition of the Pietà has it that she received Him into her arms. Taken down from the Cross by Joseph of Arimathea and John, the Body of Jesus reposes on His Mother’s lap.
Thus is fulfilled the twofold prophecy: we behold Him Whom we have pierced, and we behold his mother beholding Him—and us.
