A Reflection for the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
Find today’s readings here.
We know the visual: A Roman centurion stabs the crucified Christ in the side to confirm that he is dead, causing blood and water to pour forth from his wound. I have always found this particular image striking. It is one of a few occasions of gory reality that we get to witness in the Gospels. The Passion narrative actually accounts for quite a few of these. The crucifixion is, of course, brutal but even before that, we see Peter cutting off the ear of one of the Pharisees’ servants in the Garden of Gethsemane.
When I was younger, I was quite taken with the gorier tales in the Bible. Peter comes off like an eager action hero, ready to strike at a moment’s notice to protect Jesus—though of course Christ chastises him for such reckless behavior. And there are the Judges, chief among them Samson, basically a superhero who receives awesome strength from his hair. He slays a thousand Philistines with nothing but a donkey’s jawbone and dies in an epic temple collapse of his own making, taking his betrayer Delilah with him. It’s all stuff that a young boy really appreciates from Bible stories.
But there was always one gory element that I was taken with above all: the piercing of Jesus’ side. It might come off as not even particularly bloody given what comes before it, but I was fascinated by it as a child. It could just be that, out of a host of holy relics, the lance feels the most like something that comes out of Lord of the Rings. The idea of a holy lance, and all of the action-oriented imagery that implies, certainly makes for compelling imaginative whimsy. Yet again another thing for a young boy to latch onto.
The history of the holy lance is quite interesting, too. According to some sources, the Roman centurion Longinus suffered from weak sight and was cured of this affliction when his eyes were touched by Jesus’ blood and water. Other traditions eventually claimed that Longinus became a convert to Christianity and was eventually martyred. He is officially St. Longinus in the Catholic tradition, with his official feast day being the 16th of October.
More interesting to me as a youngster, the lance itself (or, more accurately, artifacts claimed to be the lance) have popped up at various points throughout history. As a fan of “Indiana Jones” and “The Mummy,” I obsessed over ancient artifacts, and the Lance of Longinus gave me a way to apply that interest to my faith. I remember going on a deep dive into the history of the lance and all of its supposed sightings. One account claims that after the Siege of Antioch during the First Crusade, the lance was found buried beneath the city’s Church of St. Peter. The crusaders credited the lance with granting them victory. Another of the supposed lances is housed in Saint Peter’s Basilica, though the church remains silent on its validity as a relic.
Perhaps the most interesting, at least to me, is the Lance of Vienna, which is said to have incorporated one of Christ’s nails into its head. This particular lance was revered not only as a religious symbol but a national one; it became incorporated as part of the Holy Roman Emperor’s Imperial Regalia, the collection of objects that were bestowed upon the H.R.E.’s monarch including the crown. The Lance of Vienna came to be passed down from emperor to emperor, and eventually over the centuries came into the possession of various states after the dissolution of the H.R.E. Most notably, it is even said that Adolf Hitler came to possess the lance and used it as justification for his claim that the Third Reich was the proper successor state to the H.R.E.
Clearly, many individuals throughout history have been fascinated with the lance and what it represents. But what can we learn from the lance? The most important lesson is that the lance is not an instrument of violence; it is an instrument of holy validation. Its first goal was to confirm the death of our lord, an important part of the resurrection narrative. And throughout history, it has been used to justify everything from military victories to nationalism. As interesting as the lance itself may be, let’s be careful about how we use it and other holy relics. Its primary holiness comes in its association with Christ, and one should never abuse that association for materiality.
