My dear parishioners,
Peace! The Catechism of the Catholic Church mentions the Heart of Jesus variously. “Scripture is a unity by reason of the unity of God’s plan, of which Christ Jesus is the center and heart, open since His Passover. The phrase ‘heart of Christ’ can refer to Sacred Scripture, which makes known His heart, closed before the Passion, as the Scripture was obscure” (CCC, 112; cf. Luke 24:25-27, 44-46; Psalm 22:14). how in view of the incarnation He loves with a human heart, and “the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced by our sins and for our salvation ‘is quite rightly considered the chief sign and symbol of that … love with which the divine Redeemer continually loves the eternal Father and all human beings’ without exception” (cf. CCC, 470, 478; John 19:34; Pius XII Encyclical Haurietis aquas). One form of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Here we consider the twenty-sixth of the thirty-three invocations: Heart of Jesus, pierced with a lance.
The Litany reminds us of John 19:33-34 where we read about the soldiers who pierced the side of the Lord Jesus who had already died. This is tantamount to the mutilation of a corpse. The civil law of the time required verification that the executed person was actually dead. John 19:37 cites Zechariah 12:10 to the effect that “they will look on Him whom they have pierced.” The blood and water flowed out immediately. Saint Augustine (+430) among others, recognizes in the blood and water the source of the sacramental life of the Church (e.g. Baptism and Eucharist; Tractate 120). The image of the Divine Mercy devotion, revealed to St Maria Faustina Kowalska (+1938), similarly has two streams of rays, red and white, emanating from the area of the Sacred Heart, symbolizing the blood and water which “gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus, as a fount of mercy for us.” His “agonized Heart was opened by a lance on the Cross” (cf. Divine Mercy in my soul, Stockbridge, MA: Marian, 2005, 299, 309).
The medical doctor Pierre Barbet, in his volume, A Doctor at Calvary, The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ as Described by a Surgeon (Image 1963), treats the wound in the Heart of Jesus in eighteen pages (129-147), drawing from is knowledge of medicine and the Fathers of the Church. Basing his studies on the Shroud of Turin, Barbet (138) notes that the “latus apertum” opening the right side is discussed by Caesar in his commentary De Bello Gallico (Book I, 25, 6; Book VII, 50,1) and De Bello Civili (Book III, 86, 3). It seems to have been standard practice in the fencing-schools of the Roman legion for foot-soldiers to deal the mortal blow with a lance correctly above the sixth rib, perforating the fifth intercostal space.
May our devotion to the Sacred Heart radiate in our devotion to His Sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist
God bless you!
Father John Arthur Orr