Let us consider some of the ways that, in the history of the Christian faith, these prophecies were understood to have been fulfilled. Various Fathers of the Church, especially those in Asia Minor, spoke of the wounded side of Jesus as the source of the water of the Holy Spirit: the word, its grace and the sacraments that communicate it. The courage of the martyrs is born of “the heavenly fount of living waters flowing from the side of Christ” 85Acta Martyrum Lugdunensium, in EUSEBIUS OF CAESARIA, Historia Ecclesiastica, V, 1: PG 20, 418. or, in the version of Rufinus, “the heavenly and eternal streams that flow from the heart of Christ”. 86RUFINUS, V, 1, 22, in GCS, Eusebius II, 1, p. 411, 13ff. We believers, reborn in the Spirit, emerge from the cleft in the rock; “we have come forth from the heart of Christ”. 87SAINT JUSTIN, Dial. 135,3: PG 6, 787 His wounded side, understood as his heart, filled with the Holy Spirit, comes to us as a flood of living water. “The fount of the Spirit is entirely in Christ”. 88NOVATIAN, De Trinitate, 29: PL 3, 994; cf. SAINT GREGORY OF ELVIRA, Tractatus Origenis de libris Sanctarum Scripturarum, XX, 12: CSSL 69, 144. Yet the Spirit whom we have received does not distance us from the risen Lord, but fills us with his presence, for by drinking of the Spirit we drink of the same Christ. In the words of Saint Ambrose: “Drink of Christ, for he is the rock that pours forth a flood of water. Drink of Christ, for he is the source of life. Drink of Christ, for he is the river whose streams gladden the city of God. Drink of Christ, for he is our peace. Drink of Christ, for from his side flows living water”. 89Expl. Ps. 1:33: PL 14, 983-984.
Saint Augustine opened the way to devotion to the Sacred Heart as the locus of our personal encounter with the Lord. For Augustine, Christ’s wounded side is not only the source of grace and the sacraments, but also the symbol of our intimate union with Christ, the setting of an encounter of love. There we find the source of the most precious wisdom of all, which is knowledge of him. In effect, Augustine writes that John, the beloved disciple, reclining on Jesus’ bosom at the Last Supper, drew near to the secret place of wisdom. 90Cf. Tract. in Ioannem 61, 6: PL 35, 1801. Here we have no merely intellectual contemplation of an abstract theological truth. As Saint Jerome explains, a person capable of contemplation “does not delight in the beauty of that stream of water, but drinks of the living water flowing from the side of the Lord”. 91Ep. ad Rufinum, 3, 4.3: PL 22, 334.
Saint Bernard takes up the symbolism of the pierced side of the Lord and understands it explicitly as a revelation and outpouring of all of the love of his heart. Through that wound, Christ opens his heart to us and enables us to appropriate the boundless mystery of his love and mercy: “I take from the bowels of the Lord what is lacking to me, for his bowels overflow with mercy through the holes through which they stream. Those who crucified him pierced his hands and feet, they pierced his side with a lance. And through those holes I can taste wild honey and oil from the rocks of flint, that is, I can taste and see that the Lord is good… A lance passed through his soul even to the region of his heart. No longer is he unable to take pity on my weakness. The wounds inflicted on his body have disclosed to us the secrets of his heart; they enable us to contemplate the great mystery of his compassion”. 92Sermones in Cant. 61, 4: PL 183, 1072.
This theme reappears especially in William of Saint-Thierry, who invites us to enter into the heart of Jesus, who feeds us from his own breast. 93Expositio altera super Cantica Canticorum, c. 1: PL 180, 487. This is not surprising if we recall that for William, “the art of arts is the art of love… Love is awakened by the Creator of nature, and is a power of the soul that leads it, as if by its natural gravity, to its proper place and end”. 94WILLIAM OF SAINT-THIERRY, De natura et dignitate amoris, 1: PL 184, 379. That proper place, where love reigns in fullness, is the heart of Christ: “Lord, where do you lead those whom you embrace and clasp to your heart? Your heart, Jesus, is the sweet manna of your divinity that you hold within the golden jar of your soul (cf. Heb 9:4), and that surpasses all knowledge. Happy those who, having plunged into those depths, have been hidden by you in the recess of your heart”. 95ID., Meditivae Orationes, 8, 6: PL 180, 230.
Saint Bonaventure unites these two spiritual currents. He presents the heart of Christ as the source of the sacraments and of grace, and urges that our contemplation of that heart become a relationship between friends, a personal encounter of love.
Bonaventure makes us appreciate first the beauty of the grace and the sacraments flowing from the fountain of life that is the wounded side of the Lord. “In order that from the side of Christ sleeping on the cross, the Church might be formed and the Scripture fulfilled that says: ‘They shall look upon him whom they pierced’, one of the soldiers struck him with a lance and opened his side. This was permitted by divine Providence so that, in the blood and water flowing from that wound, the price of our salvation might flow from the hidden wellspring of his heart, enabling the Church’s sacraments to confer the life of grace and thus to be, for those who live in Christ, like a cup filled from the living fount springing up to life eternal”. 96SAINT BONAVENTURE, Lignum Vitae. De mysterio passionis, 30.
Bonaventure then asks us to take another step, in order that our access to grace not be seen as a kind of magic or neo-platonic emanation, but rather as a direct relationship with Christ, a dwelling in his heart, so that whoever drinks from that source becomes a friend of Christ, a loving heart. “Rise up, then, O soul who are a friend of Christ, and be the dove that nests in the cleft in the rock; be the sparrow that finds a home and constantly watches over it; be the turtledove that hides the offspring of its chaste love in that most holy cleft”. 97Ibid., 47.