Conduit or Barrier?

A Reflection of the Gospel of John on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus – 7 June 2024

    Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. On this day, it is appropriate that we hear St John’s account of the immediate aftermath of Jesus’ crucifixion. Unlike the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), St John purposely proclaims Jesus as the Paschal Lamb, the perfect Sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. St John records that Jesus’ death occurs as the Passover Lambs are sacrificed in the Temple (John 19:31). He is the perfect sacrifice; not a bone is broken (Exodus 12:46). St John also records the opening of Jesus’ Sacred Heart such that blood and water flowed out. His sacred blood and water splashed upon the Cross, our lintel, such that death may pass over.

For when the LORD goes by to strike down the Egyptians, seeing the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over that door and not let the destroyer come into your houses to strike you down. (Exodus 12:23 NABRE)

     The Gospel reading translates Jesus’ wounding into English using the word, “pierced.” In Greek, the word is ĕkkĕntĕō (ἐκκεντέω). A more accurate, but less poetic translation, is that the lance “transfixed” or “opened” Jesus. St Augustine writes that the Lord’s heart was “opened” so that divine life, the sacraments, could flow into the world of sin and save it. Augustine explains,

[St John] didn’t say that [the soldier] pierced his side or that he wounded it or anything else but that he opened it, so that in that way the door of life would somehow be thrown open, from which the sacraments of the Church flowed out, without which there is no entryway to the life that is the true life … O death whereby the dead come to life again! What is purer than that blood? What [is] more healthful than that wound? (St Augustine, Tract. in ev. Joan. 120.2)

     Blood normally congeals, but from the Lord’s body, though dead, poured sacred blood and water. This blood and water likely resulted from the thrust of the lance into our Lord’s heart, a pericardial effusion. The heart is precisely the font of life. It is Jesus’ life, blood and water, which pours forth from the Sacred Heart, the Paschal Lamb. Scripture records that “it is the blood as life that makes atonement.” (Leviticus 17:11 NABRE) Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that,

Whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. (John 4:14 NABRE)

     The blood and water which flows from the Sacred Heart of Jesus is efficacious, it does something, it gives us His life!

     It is the Paschal Mystery that eternal life springs forth from death. In this mystery, the Sacred Heart of God’s Son becomes the source of strength for all human hearts. Jesus’ Sacred Heart is “opened” such that it becomes, with the thrust of the lance, the door through which God the Father pours eternal love onto the world. What begins as an act of savagery to ensure Jesus is dead, becomes, through God’s love and compassion, the source of new life for the entire world.

     God allows His Heart to be opened, pierced, to give life. Are we willing to open our hearts in sacrificial love? Do we look at others with the same compassion that God has for this fallen and divided world? Will you become a conduit of the sacred blood and water which flows from Christ’s heart into the world, or will you stand afar off, a sealed vessel?

     If never opened a sealed vessel, holding all within, is of little use. Consider a sealed bottle of wine. What good is it unless it is opened? The sealed vessel is a stopping point, joined to nothing, a barrier. A conduit is open such that it is a pathway for all that flows through it from its source to its destination. Jesus’ opened Sacred Heart is just such a conduit pouring out God’s divine life for the world. Will you join His heart to yours? Today, reflect on what causes you to be a sealed vessel, a stumbling block, such that our Lord’s blood is congealed within.

     On this Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, ask the Lord for the grace to become a conduit of God’s life, blood and water, into the world. We may need to go through the pain of a piercing, but that is the ultimate act of love. Give yourself to it. With unsurpassable love and compassion, the Lamb of God gives everything that He has on the cross such that the destroyer passes-over and all marked with the blood of the lamb have life in abundance. Will you do the same? Will you open yourself such that Jesus’ Sacred Heart is yours? Will you be a conduit of, or barrier to, grace?

Endnotes:

New American Bible. Revised Edition. Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011. Print.

Paleric. (2015, December 30). Familia : Inos. FAMILIA : INOS. https://paleric.blogspot.com/2015/12/familia-inos.html

Saint Augustine. Homilies on the Gospel of John 41–124. Ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald and Boniface Ramsey. Trans. Edmund Hill. Vol. 13. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2020. Print. The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century.