He Shall See His Offspring

This will be the first installment of something I've thought about starting to do on my blog: image meditations. I know I don't post very often--a combination of the fact that I don't have many large post-worthy thoughts and that my posts can be so large that it's hard to manage them. With this series, I'll simply be posting a neat image I found and analyzing it. These will be shorter too, so hopefully more manageable to read and write. To begin with, I wanted to go through this seemingly medieval image I've found, which is also very thematic for Good Friday. There is a ton of symbolism, so let's get into it. To begin with, I want to just summarize what's going on. So basically, it shows a hill covered in vibrant flowers, but in that hill, there's a bleeding wound with some German (?) written around it. Within said wound, there is a person who I think is in a nun's habit, herself drenched in blood, praying.

For the first symbol, I want to describe the wound. This is the wound is Christ's, likely supposed to be the spear in Christ's side, though I think it really symbolizes all of them. In medieval art, there was actually a somewhat common depiction of Christ's side-wound as the opening to a womb. While these depictions look rather gross, the symbolism behind them is astounding! Remember in Genesis when Eve was made from Adam's rib and was taken from his side? Well here too, we see the Church born from our Lord's side in the precious stream of blood and water that flowed from it. These symbolize the Eucharist and Baptism respectively, through which the Church comes. This is why Isaiah 53:10 can say of Christ, "when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring." This seems strange, since we are not really called Christ's sons--or else we'd be grandsons of the Father, which would be weird. However, we can still be called His "offspring," because we are born again in Him.

What of the nun in the wound? Well we have already mentioned the fact that the Lord's bride was born from His side. This is perhaps why she is depicted as a woman, but it's also possible that it is depicting a specific famous medieval nun like Julian of Norwich or Hildegard von Bingen. If you look closely, you can also see blood flowing from the top of the wound onto her. This is a very important symbol, since the blood of a sacrifice was used to sanctify people in the Old Testament and in Revelation, the saints will have their white robes washed in Christ's blood. There's also another reference where the Jews call a curse upon themselves, saying, "His [Christ's] blood be on us and on our children." This is a super important thing, as we Christians beg for the same thing, so that His blood would cleanse us from our sins. The final and most important thing is that the wound is in an Edenic, flowery, fruitful mountain. This is Christ Himself, who is the mountain of God, the place where God comes to dwell with man. And from this mountain, we see new life flowing from His blood, a restoration of Eden for all mankind. With this in mind, we can also see the wound that the Church is in as the Mosaic "cleft of the rock." This was a small cave that Moses--by the Lord's command--hid in and thus was able to safely see the Lord's glory as He passed by. The same is true of Christ, whose wound we hide in, and when we too experience the Lord's curse of death, we shall be safe in that cleft, for our death was taken by Christ and we know that we will rise with Him into the presence of the Father. May the Lord grant it for Christ's sake.