Jesus’ Cross reads like a book. All that happens on Golgotha is presented by the Gospels in the light of the Old Testament. The Law, the Prophets and the Psalms are the background against which the witnesses see the events, discover their meaning, and give testimony. Just as, at the end of a great novel, all the information given throughout the narrative suddenly becomes one vision, the Cross is the scene in which the whole Bible finds its summit. The narratives of the Passion are the key texts through which the Bible, made of many different books composed over hundreds of years, becomes one book: the book, to Biblion, the Bible.
For the whole revelation of God, from Genesis to Apocalypse, points to the cross. Abraham knows that God will provide the lamb for the sacrifice. The angels and the saints in heaven bow before the throne of the lamb who was slain. The lamb of the new and definitive Easter is Jesus crucified. He is the lamb because He is innocent and pure; because He is offered in sacrifice in the evening; because, by His sacrificial death, He opens a way through death into life, just as the paschal lamb protected the people which was to be saved from captivity with its blood.
When Jesus was dead, a soldier came and “pierced His side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.” At first sight, this could be seen as a simple confirmation that Jesus is really dead. But the witness, who seems to be one with the Evangelist, reads this simple fact at a deeper level. From Jesus’ body issues a source, like the spring Ezekiel saw issuing from the side of the temple, and like the river which goes out from the throne of the Lamb in the Apocalypse. Jesus’ Body is a sanctuary, the Temple of God. A source of life comes out from his Holy Body. His death is life-giving. It is a source of reconciliation, regeneration, and re-creation. For Jesus is the Lamb, the new and definitive paschal lamb. His legs were not broken, as befits the Lamb of whom “not a bone shall be broken”, according to the ritual of the Paschal meal in Exodus. Jesus is also the “only son” announced by Zechariah, whom the people shall look upon after they have pierced him. The blood which comes out from His side is the blood of the New Covenant already prefigured in Exodus, whilst the water may be interpreted in connection with the purifying water announced by Ezekiel. In the light of the books of the Old Testament, the pierced side of the Lord becomes a rich symbol filled with an intense revelation of truth and mercy, love and even beauty.
For at the very moment when the side of Jesus is pierced, the holy book is opened by the Lamb. He alone can open the sealed scroll and give it to the Church to read. The faithful, washed in His blood and cleansed by His water, become able to read the sign of the Cross and, through it, to read the whole Bible as the revelation and the opening of the very Heart of our God. Through the Word of God, in the Bible and the crucified flesh of Jesus, we are given to read in the Heart of the Father.
Cor ad cor loquitur, the Heart speaks to the heart, St John Henry Newman used to say. It is with the heart that we contemplate the Cross and read the Bible. Our own heart is pierced by the two-edged sword of the Word of the Cross so that we come to realise our need for salvation and our thirst for God. At the same time, the Father opens to us His own Heart, with His will to save all and His longing for our love, His own mysterious thirst for us. Our faith is the encounter between two hearts – God’s and ours – pierced by the same love and bathed in the same light of divine Truth.
We read the Cross and the Gospel as one reads a love letter: with an open heart, with a pierced heart. This letter is written by God Himself in our very hearts by the Spirit of Jesus who gave Himself up for us on the Cross out of love. In turn, in the same Spirit, we confess with St Paul: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.”
Abbot Xavier