“I beheld water issuing out from the temple, on the right-hand side, alleluia: and all to whom that water came were saved, and they shall say: Alleluia, alleluia.”
Blood and water. It doesn’t get much more basic than that. St. Faustina’s image of the Divine Mercy, which Holy Church brings to our sight today, shows us the overflowing love of the Sacred Heart in the simplest terms we can imagine. The heart of Jesus is, in the words of our missal, the “shrine of heavenly bounty” that pours forth for us “floods of grace and compassion” (from the Preface of the Sacred Heart). According to that same prayer, the shrine was “manifest” when pierced by the spear on the cross—so again, blood and water.
St. John’s epistle also emphasizes blood and water. This is in part a reference to that scene at the cross, witnessed by St. John.
What’s the deal with blood and water? At major festivals, prior to the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, there was so much animal blood from the altar of sacrifice that a series of channels was designed to drain the blood off the side of the Temple Mount down into the neighboring Kidron valley, where it would eventually mingle with the water of the brook—a brook that many people would cross when entering into the holy city.
So when we speak of the flow of blood and water “manifesting” Christ’s sacred heart, part of what the tradition means is that this moment reveals most perfectly his identity as the new Temple. Jesus already hinted at this in his teaching—“he spoke of the temple of his body” (John 2:21). But here we get another confirmation, as well as an eschatological identification of Jesus with the new temple prophesied in Ezekiel 47. That prophecy forms the core text of the Vidi Aquam version of the Asperges that we sing in Eastertide: “I beheld water issuing out from the temple . . . and all to whom that water came were saved.” Jesus is this new temple, and the saving water is the sacrament of baptism.
But water is only the beginning. We also need the blood.
If I can jump ahead to the conclusion, we should remember that full sacramental initiation in the Church consists of three sacraments: baptism, confirmation, and Holy Eucharist. Confirmation is an extension and strengthening of baptismal grace, so we could group it with baptism here. The point is the blood: not just water, but water and blood.
In the offertory rites of the Eucharist, wine is mixed with water. Maybe you know the beautiful ancient prayer accompanying this action. It goes like this:
O God who didst wondrously create, and yet more wondrously renew the dignity of man’s nature: grant that by the mystery of this water and wine we may be made partakers of his divinity, as he vouchsafed to become partaker of our humanity, even Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord.
The ancient and medieval commentators love meditating on this symbolism of wine and water. One of the reasons they think it so important to include water in the offertory rites is that it stands for humanity: to skip the mingled water and wine would be to skip the union of Christ’s divinity and humanity. The substances remain distinct, yet they cannot at this point be separated; they remain together in a single cup. But, in another layer of meaning, the wine and water also recall—because the wine is destined to become the Precious Blood—the profusion of blood and water from the side of Christ. So the integrity of the offertory rite is tied to the integrity of the sacrifice, which is also tied to the integrity of our sacramental initiation: baptism is what it is only when it leads us into the mystery of communion with Christ. And we cannot commune with Christ until we have been born again. As one twelfth-century writer puts it, “these ought to be joined, therefore, because the font of baptism is of no profit without the blood of Christ, nor the blood without baptism; both flowed from the side of Christ. He who removes one does not imitate the mystery of the passion.”
Through these natural, traditional, and sacramental signs, we see again the fundamental message of the Lord: mercy. As Faustina puts it, “you expired, Jesus, but the source of life gushed forth for souls, and the ocean of mercy opened up for the whole world.” Amazing that this simple, uneducated nun could intuit this concept so clearly. Blood and water are both signs of life. Jesus wants to give us life. His life. The life of God.
God is merciful. That is one of the most prominent divine descriptions we read in Scripture. It is the first word used to describe God the Father in the Roman Canon, which has been used since time immemorial: “Therefore, most merciful Father . . .” (Te igitur, clementissime Pater).
Mercy is a stance of pity or forgiveness toward another party. We should therefore pause a bit before attributing it to the Godhead in a simple way, lest we imagine that God’s nature requires people to forgive for him to be God. Perhaps the more precise thing to say is that mercy is a temporal aspect of God’s eternal charity. Mercy is God’s sharing of himself with us in time. “Source of life” and “ocean of mercy” are the same divine reality. In other words, although we associate mercy most directly with the forgiveness of sins, God’s mercy is not an act of external justice, where the judge applies a law that stands outside himself. It is, rather, an opening of the divine life. Absolution from sin isn’t a strict judge relenting from the appointed punishment so much as it is that the divine Son performs a kind of CPR on our souls, breathing his own breath back into our being.
I wanted to say something more about our readings from Acts and 1 John, but I think I’ve already tried to say too much. In passing, let me suggest that we think about the early Church’s common life, so memorably depicted in Acts, and in 1 John’s insistence on the unity between love and obedience, as the practical outcome of a people who have experienced the Divine Mercy.
This brings us at last to Thomas. (See here for another take on his doubts.) This Gospel has long been the reading for “Low Sunday,” also known as Quasimodo Sunday, also known as the Octave Day of Easter. Note that it begins with the Lord’s institution of the sacrament of penance: “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” So we start with the most normal kind of mercy, the forgiveness of sins. We can also see the Lord’s particular mercy to Thomas in his doubt.
But what is his doubt, exactly? Normally, we assume that his doubt primarily concerns the Resurrection, and the idea that Jesus has appeared to the disciples. And I’m sure that’s true. But maybe that doesn’t tell us everything. After all, Thomas doesn’t tell us exactly what he won’t believe unless he sees and touches the nail marks. So I wonder if he also has doubts about the Lord’s mercy—about this whole business in forgiving sins.
Maybe he accepted, on some level, the Lord’s own ability to forgive sins. That was, after all, a subject of some controversy during his public ministry. But delegating that authority—delegating, if you will, the power of God himself, the power to directly share the divine life—is something else entirely, something astounding.
In this Thomas would be in the good company of quite a few dissenting Christians over the years, including most of our Protestant friends, who balk at the idea of Jesus actually handing on this specific authority to his apostles and their successors. It is, after all, a crazy act of generosity. I know that people sometimes look at it otherwise, acting as if sacramental confession were somehow limiting. But that, I think, misunderstands the alternative, which is that if you can confess your sins only in some generic spiritual way to God himself, you can receive only generic, theoretical absolution. What we have instead is this incredible richness in mercy, where God’s grace is available not just in some general way, but specifically, personally, whenever we need it.
Anyway, suppose that this was part of Thomas’s doubt. And what satisfies it? A direct encounter with the wound from which flowed blood and water, the proof of God’s new temple, the fount of Divine Mercy. It’s no chance that Jesus offers Thomas his wounds as the proof not just of his resurrection but of his goodness. For here is proof not just that Jesus is alive, but that his life has been opened and poured out for the life of the world.
“My Lord and my God,” says Thomas. We can say the same when we see our risen Lord veiled in the Eucharist. But we can also, contemplating his wounds, recognize in the blood and the water, the mercy and the life, he wants to give us, if only we will trust in him. “Do not be faithless, but believing.” Like Thomas, let us approach our Lord and God with faith, saying, with St. Faustina, “Jesus, I trust in you!”