Lectio
“Because the crucified Jesus returns from the dead with the word shalom on his lips. It’s precisely the juxtaposition that matters here. It’s precisely the coming together of the wounds and the shalom that produces Christianity.”
— Bishop Robert Barron, Sunday Sermon: Both His Wounds And His Peace
Meditatio
Just as God gave himself to the people of Israel in love and their response was so often rejection, abandonment, and violence, so too the Son of God gave himself to the world in love and our response was to deny him, persecute him, and kill him. And yet, he returned to us again, resurrected and glorified, with both wounds and mercy, to offer us forgiveness, peace, and his abiding Spirit that we might, in turn, offer the same to others.
What Jesus shows us in his resurrection is that healing does not precede new life. Rather, new life proceeds from and is rooted in forgiveness. The resurrection — both Jesus’s in fact and ours in baptism — is an outward sign that wounded love dies and is reborn with its wounds intact, not merely transformed in love, but transfigured by it. Glorified by it.
And so in his perfect way, Jesus brings us not only his wounds, the wounds that we gave and continue to give him, but also his peace, the divine peace of love, mercy, and forgiveness. He shows us how we hurt him, not as a means of rebuke or reprimand, but to tell us that it is okay, that he loves us, and that we are now joined together, not only in our suffering, but also in our transcendence of our need to hold onto it, our desire for justice, and our refusal to move forward in the freedom of love. And then he offers us peace — Shalom — and, in giving us his Spirit, he gives us this spirit, that we should extend the same grace to others, that in our imperfect way, we should walk into the world wounded and glorified, to offer mercy and peace to all, but especially to those who gave us those wounds.
For it is not only in our own woundedness that we are called to forgive, but also in and for the woundedness of those who wound us, others, and even themselves — for they, like us, so often know not what they do.
Shalom.
Peace be with you, wounds and all.
Oratio
The wounded Christ
our risen savior
heals us with mercy
transfigures us
through forgiveness
leaves us with his abiding love
in our unworthiness
offering us peace
from his peace
that we may offer peace
in our woundedness
to the wounded
now and forever
amen
Contemplatio
Can you sit with the image of the risen Christ showing you his wounds, not in accusation, but in love — what do you notice?
Related Scripture
“Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” — John 20:21 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like The Unending End: On Love, Resurrection, and the Life That Awaits Us, which explores how that which dies in and for love is reborn through it — body and spirit made new, even with the wounds this world has earned us, held within the love that makes all things new.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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