The Glorious Wounds of Christ and the Power of Dependency

Every year, on the first Friday after the octave of Easter, the Passionists celebrate the feast of the Glorious Wounds of Christ. Though I am not a Passionist, I love to celebrate the feast. In this mystery I find a deep well of encouragement, and it never seems to run dry. 

On the day of the Resurrection, John tells us the disciples are hidden behind locked doors. Externally, the bolted door of the upper room hides them, but internally, they are locked up by their sins, their wounds, their fears, and their grief. 

It is there, behind the locked doors, that Jesus comes to them: “Peace be with you.” To the disciples, it is unimaginable to find Jesus in their midst. They are dumbfounded. It might have been the last thing they were expecting. But if they knew Jesus, his love for us in our deepest needs, and his fidelity, it should have been the very thing they most expected. 

In time, they all came to know this love and fidelity personally, as they grew in relationship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit dwelling within them. They learned that their personal poverty, their wounds, and their sins were always Jesus’ most treasured places to abide with them. To him, they are near occasions of communion. 

But here and now, waiting in the upper room, the disciples are still learning, and we are learning with them. 

After greeting them with peace and calming their immediate fears, Jesus gives his first testimony to his Resurrection, the conquering of sin and all its effects. How does he begin this tale of tales, the proclaiming of so great a mystery? – his story starts with silence. And in that holy silence, Jesus raises his hands and holds open his wounds. 

In that timeless beholding, the tale is told, and his wounds are his words. God chose his first communication of the Resurrection to be a silent contemplation of wounds. 

We all know moments like this, where the gravity of the matter is too great, the beauty too delicate, the mystery beyond our understanding. If you were to try and describe or explain what was happening you would only cheapen the moment. The voice can communicate much, and ears discern much, but language has its limits, and only with the heart can one attune to all that God has to say to us in the quiet. 

The frequencies of love are discovered more easily in silence.

Jesus’ wounds are his words, and these words have much to say to us in this sacred silence. You might say that this is his preferred language for testifying to his Resurrection, and it is one we too can learn. It is the language of glorious wounds.

What does it mean that Christ’s wounds are glorious?

Glory is the radiation of God’s nature, the manifestation of his goodness and being. Amazingly, even with all the majesty of his divinity, the glory Jesus unveils to the disciples here is an approachable glory. He does not come into their fearful presence with gaudy fanfare or some mighty display of power. Instead, he radiates a meek and humble vulnerability. He comes wounded—wounded yet made whole. He does not rise from the dead and erase his wounds, he elevates them. 

Jesus’ desire from the beginning was to come among us, to identify with us, to become one with us. Now risen, he chooses to remain looking like us, in communion with our own experience—wounded and loved. He is not “God above us,” he is Emmanuel, God with us. No part of us is beneath him, and it is his desire that every part of us share in his glory.

In order to receive the glory Jesus wishes to share, our hearts need openness and docility so as to learn the tone, the texture, and the semantics of this new-found language. As a child learns a language through engaged and receptive openness, fluency in the resurrected life is learned through dependence upon God. 

This is the pattern of Jesus’s life, the only way he knows how to live. Over and over throughout John’s Gospel we hear Jesus testify to this reality:

“Jesus answered them and said, ‘My teaching is not my own but is from the one who sent me.’” (Jn. 7:16)

“So Jesus said [to them], ‘When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him.’” (Jn. 8:28-29)

“Because I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. So what I say, I say as the Father told me.” (Jn. 12: 49-50)

“Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works.” (Jn. 14:10)

This radical dependence upon the Father is the splendor and power of his Resurrection. “It is my Father who glorifies me,” Jesus says (Jn. 8:54). His glory is not of his own making, it comes from his communion with the Father. It is the emanation of a bond between a loving Father and a beloved Son. Glory finds its origin in relationship.

Abiding in this communion from all eternity, Jesus knew he could depend upon the Father. That is why, amidst the most desolate experience mankind has ever known, he was able to say at the end, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” 

And now, standing before his disciples in silence, he stands as the face of the Father’s fidelity–the final word, spoken against every lie ever uttered in defiance to the Father’s goodness. For God so loved the world. This is the Word still standing—invincible, but not invulnerable.

This posture of a vulnerable heart, with its invincible power, is what Our Lord desires to impart to us. 

When we choose to repent and turn back to the Father, just like in the parable of the prodigal son, we find that he is already running to meet us and prepared to transform us, to bring us into the fullness of life for which he created us. There is power in dependency, power strong enough to unseat God almighty.

Power is a type of authority to influence people or events. In the hands of tyrants, power is terrifying. No one is safe when power is used to control others. To those under it, power brings destruction to their lives, and to those who wield it, it brings a false sense of security. We witness its fragility when every tyrant’s power eventually betrays them, bringing about their end. Nonetheless, in a world of fear, we are quick to cling to anything to help us feel secure. Power is an enticing counterfeit of true security in God. 

But in an environment of love, everything changes!

Power behaves differently. It bends to bless, stoops to serve, condescends not out of superiority, but out of charity and compassion. 

Think of the way a newborn baby is welcomed into the world. At the little one’s arrival, everyone stops what they are doing to attend to the baby. Doctors, nurses, midwives, hospital staff, and many others with expertise, all come to the baby's aid. Family and friends lend hands with babysitting, car rides, and home-cooked meals. Mothers and fathers give up precious sleep for months, making their nightly vigils to ensure the little prince or princess has everything they need. All the child has to do is give a little cry, a ringing of their little bell, and every need is tended to. They are dependent, utterly dependent, and yet more powerful than they can comprehend. They move whole communities without even realizing it. 

The same is experienced at places like Lourdes, France. There, the sick and disabled are elevated to the status of royalty. They are given primacy of place as they are carried or wheeled around to the healing waters, and ultimately to the Heart of Our Lord. 

A silent song of love is sung in these places, and a heart transformed by love knows how to sing along. The need and dependency of the weakest among us strikes the first note, and loving hearts around them cannot resist to respond in harmony and aid. 

Within environments of love, where we can see glimpses of Christ’s Kingdom breaking through, we learn that power lies not in independence like a tyrant, but in a holy and healthy dependence, like a child.

Jesus’ wounds, wounds of a Son trusting a Father unto the end, proclaim this truth of love: God is safe to depend upon. At the Cross, the power of dependency has forever conquered the power of sinful independence. Jesus’ pierced hands held high are an invitation to repent of that fearful independence, and experience his loving dependence upon the Father as our own.

If we can take the time to contemplate Our Lord’s glorious wounds, and the way he looks upon us as we do, I believe we will come to experience what St. Irenaeus tells us when he says, “The glory of God is man fully alive, and the glory of man is the vision of God.”

There, in the silence, his wounds speak, “Be not afraid! Open wide the doors to the Father!” And if we lean in, we will hear the Father proclaiming, “Open wide the doors to Christ!” 

As Jesus shows you his wounds and opens the doors of his resurrected Heart, inviting you to peer in, be not afraid to show him yours. 

There’s a glory he rose to share with you.