We all, I am sure, have different texts in the Scriptures that strike us every time we hear them. The first reading we heard today has one such verse for me:
"They shall look upon the one whom they have pierced"(Zechariah 10:10)
This is a text, as we heard, from the Old Testament. And it has, for the Christian, an obvious sense of being a prophecy of Christ.
Who is the one who was pierced? Christ, on the cross, with a lance that pierced His side.
And who were the ones who pierced Him? Literally, it was the Roman centurion. But mystically, it was each one of us -we pierced Him with our sins.
And every time I come to pray, every time I gaze upon a crucifix, I "look upon the One whom I have pierced". And when I hear those words it always makes me still inside.
The text is from the prophet Zechariah, and it is an obscure text in terms of what it must have meant in its original context. It refers to a prophet who is an shepherd of a flock doomed to slaughter (Zech 11:4), an unhappy shepherd who is betrayed for thirty pieces silver (11:12-13), who is maltreated and left with marks on his body, "These wounds I received in the house of my friends" (13:6) -another prophecy.
But, even more obscurely, the text goes on with a happy prophecy, that a “fountain” will open that will wash away the sins of the people(13:1). When we apply this, as the Gospel does (Jn 19:37), as a prophecy of Christ, the fountain that gushes forth is from the wound in the side of Christ. And it is a glad thing. It is from that fountain of love that gushes forth our salvation.
Our psalm today (Ps 62) adds another hermeneutical twist to interpret this. It speaks of our thirst for God, and of that thirst being satisfied.
I mentioned a couple weeks ago that we are, in June, in the month of the Sacred Heart, and devotion to the Sacred Heart has often focused on the fountain that gushes forth from His wounded Heart. The prophecy of Isaiah is often quoted in this regard, "With Joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation" (Isaiah 12:3), and in fact the 1956 encyclical of Pope Pius XII on the Sacred Heart started with these very words, and proceeded to marvel at all the graces that have poured forth from people’s devotion to that Heart.
Then our Gospel text recalls the prophecy of the Lord Jesus that He would suffer and die and that anyone who would be His disciple must also, daily, take up His cross.
Let me simply draw these three strands together in thinking of His Heart:
Centuries of devotion to the Sacred Heart have indeed, as Pius XII noted, drawn forth countless graces for the Faithful. But these graces, from the wellspring of salvation, only pour into us, into in our hearts when we responds to His.
I do, indeed, as a physical fact, often “gaze upon the one whom I have pierced”.
But I do not always do so spiritually, I do not always look upon Him in a way that loves in return for love. The sight of the One whom I have pierced can leave me unmoved.
Or, as I do in my better moments, I can see the one I have pierced and realise WHO has pierced Him, that I have priced Him. I might then, "Mourn for Him, as for an only Son"(Zechariah 12:10), and "weep bitterly" (Ibid).
There are different sorts of weeping, and the weeping that responds to His wounds is a weeping of both sorrow and joy. Sorrow for my sins that have done this to Him. But joy in realising the love He has had, and still has, for me.
And, finally, that should move me to action, move me, in particular, to take my MY cross in a renewed way. To carry it with Him who carries it with me, who, in fact, first and foremost carries it for me. And to offer it to Him in reparation for my sins.
"These wounds I received in the house of my friends" (13:6)
"They shall look upon the one whom they have pierced"(Zechariah 10:10)
They shall "Mourn for Him, as for an only Son"(Zechariah 12:10), and "weep bitterly" (Ibid).
But, that Heart was pierced for me, it flows for me,
and, "With Joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation" (Isaiah 12:3)
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