Seeing that He was already dead, one of the soldiers pierced His side with a lance, and immediately there came forth blood and water.
Between the death and resurrectionCame the gift.The strength to give,The knowledge of the giving,The gift itself – the life –Had gone.Only then: the piercing and the gift.
Life offered to the Father was received, and in that act returned with powerDeath could not survive.The second resurrectionWaits on our acceptance of the gift.
To say that we were born of that pierced Heart,Admits the exigency of death.After death, we give, Unknown to ourselves, And in the piercing rather than the doing. The search
Is contemplation.A being which accepts and therefore is, With power death can never touch again: A quiet dynamism, bursting towardsThe second resurrection.
Anne Carter, RSCJHoly Week, 1970
Icon by Theophanes the Cretan [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
