During the chanting of the Passion Gospel on Holy Thursday, they came to the section where the solider thrusts his lance into the side of Jesus. I could almost feel a twinge in my side at that moment, so keen was my sense to the thought of how that spear went up into the heart. And then I was reminded of how in William of St. Thierry's meditation, he tries to stick his finger up into that wound so he can plunge right into Jesus heart.
In William's meditation, a voice says, "Dogs, outside." And so he hurries from the wound to embrace God's hand.
Isn't that shocking? Dogs outside! When I first read it the I had to close the book because of surprise. Of course, what he was doing in that meditation was using a sinful hand to put into the all pure wound that leads to the Heart of Christ.
William does not identify the voice as the voice of God, or even of an angel. All he said was, "a voice." In the fully developed theology of the Sacred Heart, the wound is the entrance to the heart. Many meditations encourage you to imagine your way up the path of the spear into the heart.
Perhaps Abbot William of St. Thierry heard his own voice, the voice of his awareness of sin and guilt. We modern people know all about those voices of sin and guilt.
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