The Apostle (Eph. 5:31-32), fitting the Lord's death to the sleep of Adam, says that at the very beginning of the world the fashioning of the woman from the rib of the sleeping man signified the frame of the Church that was to be born. For when man had been formed from the earth, if we recall what we have read, a consort was lacking to him; and although he was inexperienced, yet his untried mind craved the companionship of comfort. Then Adam is bound in his senses, loosed in sleep, and once the mystery of this likeness had been celebrated, so heavy a weight of a new slumber pressed upon him that he may rightly be seen to have signified death by that very motionless and insensible repose. And thus, as he lay, one of his ribs is drawn out; and when the woman had been formed from it, to the man now come back to life the gains of wedlock are repaid for the loss of a limb.
Behold, here too this day a new Adam, who is to heal the old sins, is received in rest, overwhelmed by the sleep of the cross that was driven into him. Now we must see what it means that the Church is said to be formed from His side alone, when the whole man Himself dies for the salvation of the Church. John the Evangelist relates (John 19:31-32) how, when the Lord had been crucified with two thieves, namely on the sixth day of the week toward evening, so that the solemnity of the festal day should not find the bodies hanging, the legs of the thieves were broken to hasten their death; but when they had recognized that the Lord had already breathed His last, they perceived that they must refrain from that likeness of punishment, because even if the truth is pressed by the conspiracy of enemies, it is not broken:
especially since it had been foretold concerning the immolation of the Lamb, «You shall not break a bone of it» (Exod. 12:46). And yet here, in the case of the Lord, that which was not necessary to be done for His destruction was accomplished for the sake of a mystery. For one of the soldiers, seizing a dart—to use the very word—«opened His side» (John 19:34). Therefore he did not rend it, did not pierce it through, did not at last cut the throat, but, it says, he «opened» it; so that we may understand the vital door of the open wound to be not so much the trace of a wound as the entrance of salvation. For that ark too (Gen.
6:6) too—by whose enclosure Noah, safe amid the destroying floods of the age and the raging death, alone swam through unharmed while all the rest perished—we read had in its side the door by which entrance to safety, or return to the light, was made. I recognize therefore even today in the Lord, who rises through the cross into His rest (Ps. 131:8), that He Himself is also the ark, that is, the flesh of His sanctification: I recognize, I say, in the side of this ark our entrance. Let us first see what proceeds from thence, and afterward let us mark how the Christian entered in there. When the Lord's side had been laid open, therefore, there flowed forth abundantly, in streaming rivers, water and blood. What is more wonderful than such a deed? What more luminous than this sign? What fuller of mystery?
It is certain indeed that Christ suffered pain, and certain that He died; but even the truth of His death preserves in Him its own dignity. What condition of a human body ever had a flow of water or of blood? Grant—though it is scarcely permitted even by the reasoning of custom—that dead flesh should retain its own gore; but where in the body of the dying lay hidden the little spring of living water? Whence proceeds a double river that shall make fruitful the parched world, pure with liquid, precious with gore? Whence bursts forth the wave of the holy stream, alone able to satisfy for the quenching of the vapors of Gehenna? Behold, you see our consort being built from the side of our Adam. Behold, the bride being prepared for Him who shall live, even while He dies. Behold, it being enjoined upon the sleeping One that which shall gladden Him when He is to wake;
moreover, the whole Church consists of two kinds of men. One is that which is saved by a faithful death, the other by a sublime passion; one which fell asleep for Christ, the other which lived for Christ. Let us, then, receive the water from the Lord's side, the martyrs the blood. Let the precious purple of blood clothe them; let the snow-white wave of baptism besprinkle us.