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The Wound in Christ’s Side

Culprits inflicted countless injuries
On Jesus’ body during fifteen hours;
The spear-thrust (last of loathsome savageries)
Ripped out from His dead Heart, for sins of ours,
Water and blood in separate healing showers.

Although the gaping puncture proves Him dead,
The wondrous wound, life’s mystic fountainhead,
Releases every drop of precious blood
To grace the Church, His body and His bride;
Its living water cleanses Adam’s mud
As baptized members enter justified.

The motive for His Passion’s every pain
Is Love. He was delivered up entire,
For Christ’s humiliations foreordain
Almighty power drawing mankind higher
In union with Our Lord and sanctifier.

But now upon His corpse restored to Mary,
The wound is mauled by rogues voluptuary,
Though treasured in adoring contemplation
Of those who know its chasm fathomless
As source of sacramental consummation
And shelter for embattled holiness.

I love without reserve but with restraint,
Abandoning degenerate liberty,
Because His sacrifice to make a saint
Of me and raise us to nobility
Required that gash in deathless majesty.

There He is sovereign and His Church perfected.
No glory of that wound should be neglected,
Pierced passageway profound from Jesus’ Heart,
Whence virtues all and merit must proceed
To purify our flesh and thoughts and art:
“I grant to you my Kingdom,” He decreed,
“My Father’s realm on earth, hereby effected.”

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Poet’s note: Water and blood flowed from the side of the dead Christ when it was pierced by a soldier’s spear, according to the Gospel of John 19:34–35. From Saint Ambrose (340–397) if not earlier, the water and blood have been held to represent the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist, necessary for the origin and nurture of the Church. Ambrose (with very many others, including the current Catechism of the Catholic Church) teaches that the Church was born from the side of Christ as He slept the sleep of death on the Cross. The above poem, as a meditation on the Passion, ends by paraphrasing Luke 22:29, from that Gospel’s Passion narrative. It also makes reparation for the recent blasphemy viewing the wound in Christ’s side as a post mortem transgender phenomenon.

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Margaret Coats lives in California.  She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University.  She has retired from a career of teaching literature, languages, and writing that included considerable work in homeschooling for her own family and others. 

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43 Responses

    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Michael. I am only doing a little of what I owe Him.

      Reply
  2. Jeffrey J Essmann

    Thank you for this, Margaret.

    A blessed Holy Week to you.

    Reply
  3. Cynthia Erlandson

    There are so many marvelous things about this sacramental poem for Holy Week. “It’s living water cleanses Adam’s mud / As baptized members enter justified.” so succinctly draws an image of the meaning of the water. And your description of the wound as “life’s mystic fountainhead” that releases the blood so necessary for the Church, is a profound image as well. Thank you for this poem, Margaret.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Cynthia. We cannot help but recall the sacraments as we re-present the Holy Week that saved the world by bringing them to us. I am honored that you find my descriptions worthy of the sacred realities.

      Reply
  4. Jeremiah Johnson

    Dear Margaret, Thanks for a Holy Week poem full of theological and spiritual food for thought. I found that fourth stanza fascinating and read it through several times trying to figure it out before your footnote clarified it. Part of me feels like such an off-the-wall interpretation of the piercing event doesn’t even warrant mention in this rich poem – although I get the strongly felt need to address the issue. I do really like that phrase, “shelter for embattled holiness.”

    Also, I enjoyed how you personalized the poem in the second to last stanza, internalizing the lofty theology of the previous stanzas, and then finally broadened the perspective to the whole family of believers.

    Thanks again!

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Jeremiah, yours is a rich comment. Especially, you’ve raised the question several others here address, of writing a poem that needs a note to fully understand it as reparation for an offense. You are correct that no notice of the offensive interpretation of Christ’s wound was really needed. I could have made a poem of reparation with only the beauty of theology and tradition. I kept my notice of the offense to a minimum, but I included it to mark this poem specifically as reparation. That dates it and blemishes it, I agree, but it blemishes the poem as Christ’s wounds blemish His risen body. In Catholic tradition, we believe we will enter heaven at the end of time with bodies unmarred by whatever flaws they had or acquired on earth, EXCEPT that martyrs will keep the healed wounds of martyrdom, just as Christ rose able to show the evidence of His crucifixion to His disciples. If my poem is worthy to survive the destruction of “wood, hay, and straw” in the last judgment of human accomplishments, it will bear a glorious blemish. Incidentally, my personal touch here also emerged from this work not being a poem on exalted theology and tradition alone. Thank you for noticing it and liking it enough to comment!

      Reply
  5. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Fascinating rhyme scheme with sublime words conveying not only the agony that Christ went through for love, but our own cleansing by his blood and sacrifice. This is a befitting homage for this time of year with an accurate portrayal from the Gospels as amplified by your majestic words that spill forth from your own heart piercing our souls and reminding us that Christ died for us.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      What a prose poem of a comment, Roy! Thank you for your appreciation.

      Reply
  6. Joseph S. Salemi

    Margaret, who spoke this “recent blasphemy” about the wound in Christ’s side, referring to it as a “post mortem transgender phenomenon”? I had not heard of this. Was it one of our Vat-2 freaks?

    Reply
      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Thank you, Evan, I did not associate Margaret’s poem with what Susan had written in December. I just assumed Margaret was writing about blasphemy by a Catholic.

      • Julian D. Woodruff

        It’s head-spinning what is happening with academic freedom. On the one hand, one can be fired for using the “wrong” pronoun, even accidentally, without regard to forum or context. And, apparently, academic freedom can be stretched to outrageous and deliberately offensive license, again no matter the context, and receive the sanctimonious blessing of some supposedly sage and respectable authority.

      • Margaret Coats

        Evan, thank you for providing the complete work of art, which the blasphemous preacher copied in part only to illustrate his sermon. I believe anyone interested can see the image he used by going to the Daily Mail newspaper story via your link above. It shows the body of Jesus in a more nearly prone position with blood flowing unnaturally over the genital area. The preacher made a great point of that connection. In contrast, the actual painting shows the figure of Jesus almost vertical, with blood flowing naturally downward. The private parts are not visible but beneath a cloth, with visibly painted folds, held over them by attendant angels, who can only be seen at the edges of the full picture. The preacher would have made the painter an accomplice in his blasphemous sexualization of the scene, but we can easily see the painter’s concern to depict rather the divinity of Christ (with the heavenly Father and the dove of the Holy Spirit present) and earthly grief at His death, evidenced by His mother and beloved disciple.

    • Margaret Coats

      This is a reply to Joseph Salemi, which may get oddly placed among several comment boxes here. Joe, I don’t know of any such blasphemy by a professing Catholic. In fact, the former chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II (apparently the highest authority the Daily Mail could find to speak against the blasphemous Cambridge dean), is a former chaplain because he resigned to become a Catholic. More power to such a bold man in the present state of the Church!

      “Post mortem transgender phenomenon” is how I describe the blasphemer’s claim about the wound. It is patently ridiculous to claim Our Lord had a transgender body because of a mutilation inflicted after death.

      Like some others here, I received news of the blasphemy when Susan did. Her poem of immediate outrage was a needed denunciation of evil, just like the response of persons who were present, but shouted against the preacher and left the church.

      Reparation like mine takes more time. I took a cue from Susan’s title, “Check Out Your Church,” to explore what our Church teaches and thinks. Of course that must mean what the Church has always taught and thought, not what some weak or woke preacher might say today. When Evan was kind enough to accept the poem, I asked for publication on Wednesday of Holy Week because the passion narrative from the Gospel of Luke (which I quote) is read on that day. That’s why the poem appears at a distance from the blasphemy and from immediate response to it.

      Reply
      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Thank you for the clarification, Margaret.

  7. Brian A Yapko

    Margaret, thank you for gifting us with this magnificent poem — particularly during Holy Week. It is not only magnificent in conception and execution – it is an exceedingly important poem which deserves the widest possible audience.

    You describe the poem as a meditation on the Passion, which it most assuredly is. You also describe it as making “reparation for the recent blasphemy” which was, as I understand it, the now infamous sermon in Britain which nonsensically, radically and ideologically presumed to reinterpret Christ’s wound through a trans lens in a way that was so insanely offensive parishioners had to shout rebukes and walk out. It received attention which it did not deserve. I do not wish to direct attention to that deeply offensive blasphemy more than is absolutely necessary to shine a spotlight on a) how healing your beautiful poem is; and b) how important the corrective theology is with which you infuse the poem. The nature and meaning of Christ’s wound is unmistakable and it has nothing to do with common (I mean “common” in the most withering, base sense) social justice ideologies. Why must Jesus be subjected to identity politics?

    Your writing makes it inconceivable that any literate member of the clergy would ever mistake the meaning of Christ’s wound: “… its chasm fathomless/As source of sacramental consummation/And shelter for embattled holiness.” Well, we are certainly living in a time of embattled holiness and so your words bring great comfort. More than comfort – you bring truth and no small amount of theological course-correction. There are certain truths that are immutable and you do well to present the significance of Christ’s wound, especially the water and blood and the marriage of the Christ to the Church. Perhaps most important is Christ’s sacrifice as Savior: “His sacrifice to make a saint/Of me and raise us to nobility/Required that gash in deathless majesty.” Without saying so directly, your work makes inescapable the conclusion that ideological attempts to twist this ineffably profound Love into support for identity politics are acts of supreme narcissism. Christ’s love for Mankind and His sacrifice are what matter.

    The structure of the poem is quite fascinating – your work is made up of six stanzas, but the number of lines varies: 5-6-5-6-5-7. Can you explain the thought that went into this particular form? Your use of language is beautiful, biblical and exquisitely precise. The tremendous amount of craft you put into it shows abundantly and was time and care well-spent.

    As I said before, this is an important poem which deserves a large audience. I hope it is widely shared – especially as we now approach Good Friday and Easter. Superlatively well done, Margaret.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Brian, you understand what reparation means and does. When you speak of “correction” and “healing,” those are its purposes, or at least the purposes a poem can accomplish in relation to writer and readers. The most important reparation to be made for any sin is, of course, to God, but our offerings are only worthwhile if we offer what He has given us for that purpose. And that is Himself in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which you speak of here by saying that Christ’s sacrifice is the most important of truths treated in my poem. Your third paragraph here outlines several others, which just goes to show the wealth we can enjoy in contemplation of divine things, if we will only be children of the Church and less so of the world. Not to abandon the places God has assigned us in the world, but to remind it of little-known treasures.

      I intended to structure this poem in 33 lines for the years of Our Lord’s life. And I thought of an 11-line ballade stanza as a way to do it, but the first stanza I wrote broke into a 5-line stanza and a 6-line stanza. They use a rhyme scheme typical for a ballade of 11 lines, namely, ababb ccdede. I chose to go on with fives and sixes, but without adhering to the ballade requirement of using the same rhyme sounds throughout the poem, and without a refrain. You will see that the third, fourth, and fifth stanzas keep the same rhyme pattern–as does the sixth, until the very last line. The sixth stanza rhymes mmnonom, going back to the first rhyme sound in the stanza for the last line and last sound of the poem. I’m using rhyme-scheme letters that correspond to the total number of sounds used. A more typical ending for us poets writing in English would have been closure with a rhymed couplet, especially as these two lines form a quote. Meaning and solemnity dictated otherwise. Thus I end with a stanza of seven lines (the number of completion or perfection) and 34 lines in all. Thirty-four lines, one more than the number of years in Our Lord’s earthly life, indicate the beginning of the current era when the Church is His presence on earth. And that is perfectly apropos, as the Church is the Kingdom of whose establishment He speaks in the final quotation!

      Reply
  8. Julian D. Woodruff

    I don’t think I can add anything to what others have said, Margaret, except admire its elevation and contemplative quality (even though it references recent desecratory comments). A beauty.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Julian, for these choice appreciative words. And thanks as well for the remark above about how easily speakers can get away with objectively offensive talk, even on the weightiest subjects, as long as they observe picky current rules about specially privileged language.

      Reply
  9. Cynthia Erlandson

    I was just reading George Herbert’s exquisite poem “The Sacrifice” this evening, and its penultimate stanza reminded me again of your fourth stanza above, as well as your note below the poem:
    “Nay, after death their spite shall further go;
    For they will pierce my side, I full well know;
    That as sin came, so Sacraments might flow:
    Was ever grief like mine?”

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you for this second comment, Cynthia! That stanza by Herbert does express truth that I treat in this poem. He speaks of so many aspects of Christ’s sacrifice in his very lengthy “The Sacrifice” because it is his version of the Improperia or Reproaches of the Good Friday liturgy. You probably know that, but you may not know how many poets have created their own versions. The Reproaches are spoken by Christ, reminding His people of all the good He has done for them, with only ingratitude and disobedience and scorn in return. I’ll trade you stanza for stanza. Here’s one translated by me from French poet Eustache Deschamps, who focuses on all creation (except for man!) serving God.

      The stars serve Me as candles; they have shown
      With slightest light, the winter’s icy glaze
      On fields that frigid winds for Me have mown.
      The dead time of the year should ever raise
      Thoughts of man’s death, for which Redemption pays,
      Since I came when the wastes bore only furze
      To give my life that man’s sad state allays,
      But against Me, man ever strives and errs.

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Sorry half my lines were too long for a reply box! Please imagine the above as a proper 8-line stanza.

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Cynthia, this is the precise liturgical “Reproach” or “Improperium” suited to my poem. We sang it yesterday.

      “I opened the sea before you, and you have opened my side with a spear.”

      This is followed by the refrain sung after every “Reproach”:

      “My people, what have I done to you? How have I grieved you? Answer me. Because I brought you out of the land of Egypt, you have prepared a cross for your Savior.”

      Reply
  10. Monika Cooper

    I know. You are standing protectively between Him and the wolves. It’s a very good place to be found standing. Because when we protect Him, He protects us. Blessed Triduum.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Blessed Triduum to you and your family, too, Monika! I am getting back to you on the second day rather than the first because I am singing all three Triduum days and Easter Sunday too. Thanks for your reminder of His protection, and your appreciation of the poem. I hadn’t thought of it as standing protectively between Him and the wolves, so you have given me real and unique encouragement.

      Reply
  11. Cheryl Corey

    I think one aspect which makes this poem so effective is the way that you move from the specific (the wound) to broader philosophical thought.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      You’re right, Cheryl, and thank you for saying so. It’s always a good method, and with this topic, the richness of thought offers almost unlimited perspectives.

      Reply
  12. Laura Deagon

    Margaret, while the sacrifice of our Lord is embedded in our faith and hearts, your poem allows me to relive the account of His suffering from another viewpoint. I don’t think there will ever be too many perspectives of this sacrifice. Each one allows us to imagine being there.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Laura. I too found many perspectives in doing this meditation, and we know God opens up an infinite number of angles to initiate or enrich faith in each one of us.

      Reply
  13. Joshua C. Frank

    Margaret, this poem is beautiful… and difficult to read because it’s difficult to contemplate not only what Jesus went through as a sacrifice for all of us, but how some today mock His sacrifice to push their evil agendas. Refuse to use a trans person’s chosen pronouns and you’re somehow a murderer, but insist that any historical person is trans and you’re a hero, with bonus points if it’s someone in the Bible and extra bonus points if it’s Jesus, and more still if it’s something like that sermon! (Don’t get me started on that!)

    I also love the form you’ve chosen, and once you explained it to Brian, it makes more sense, what you were going for with it.

    A Blessed Triduum to you and your family!

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks for your comment, Josh. Yes, Christ’s sacrifice for us is painful to contemplate, but it is of incalculable worth and beauty for the infinite love with which it was made, and for the continuing graces it provides us in the Church, the Mass, and the sacraments. That where the beauty of the poem comes from. Many blessings to you and your family during the remainder of the Triduum and during the Easter season!

      Reply
  14. Yael

    This is a beautiful Easter poem Margaret, thank you very much. I’m glad that you and Susan are counteracting the disgusting drivel coming out of Trinity College.
    Wishing everyone a happy Easter and Passover week.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Yael. It is indeed an Easter poem as well as a good one for Passiontide that ends today. The closing declaration, quoted from Jesus discourse at the Last Supper, shows Him looking even farther ahead than His resurrection, to the life of the Church. A blessed Easter season to you and yours!

      Reply
  15. Tom and Laurence Rimer

    Such a personal and powerful poem. It reminds us of the best of the texts used by Bach in his cantatas, which his poet moves from the theological to the personal. Now we need a fine composer to set it to music!

    As for the transgender business, it is not even worth a comment.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Many thanks, Tom and Laurence, for taking time to read and respond. I had not thought of this as a cantata text, but your idea encourages me that I have been able to present both the universal and the personal here.

      Reply
  16. Rosana A.

    Very beautiful and touching poem, Margaret!
    Perfect timing for this past Holy Week. Worth reading again and again.

    Thank you for sharing this magnificent message of pure love and sacrifice, completely and willingly given for me and for all.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you for your beautifully expressed appreciation, Rosana. You are right, the poem reflects on Holy Week, but some thoughts of the Our Lord’s sacrifice are appropriate at any time.

      Reply
  17. James Sale

    An extremely fine poem, Margaret, all the more important in this time of secularism as well as poetic ineptitude: this is a welcome antidote. Thank you.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      James, I believe you noticed that line near the end suggesting that Jesus’ heart can purify our art. Much appreciate your comment!

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you for reading, Kathy. It is heart-wrenching for us to recall the many sufferings of Our Lord’s Sacred Heart, physical, moral, and emotional, including this wound inflicted after His death, and the wounds that continue to be offered. With everything that’s been said here, I still wonder about my decision to mention the recent blasphemy, but the fact that we continue to grieve Our Lord suggests how necessary it is to continue specific reparation as long as the offenses come.

      Reply

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