Wounds

A Good Friday personal meditation and prayer

I have wounds.

Some, the festering sores of hurts from other hands.

Some from the fates of life’s chance and circumstance.

Some self-inflicted by my false choices that forsook what I believed and knew to be good, right, and true.

Jesus had…has wounds. For the marks in his flesh of his suffering and dying remained clear and visible on his resurrection body.[1]

Sometimes I think of my wounds as marks of my undeniable, memorable life’s experience. Even more, as symbols of similitude with the stigmata of Jesus.

O Lord Jesus, if this, especially the latter, is true, then I rejoice in my wounds, never to repeat or deepen them, but rather…but only to claim the victory of vulnerability in you. Amen.

© 2023 PRA

Illustration: Christ on the Cross (detail), Matthias Grünewald (1470-1528)

---

[1] Although none of the canonical gospel accounts explicitly state that Jesus, after he rose from the grave, bore on his body the marks of his suffering and death, John, variously, implies it: Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” He showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord (John 20.19b-20). And, in response to the other disciples saying, “We have seen the Lord”, Thomas declared, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe” (John 20.25) And, when the resurrected Jesus appeared to Thomas, he said to him, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe” (John 20.27).