By none shall scepter be taken away from Juda nor rule from his lap, until He shall come Who Is sent; And that shall be the expectation of nations: tying to the vineyard his colt, and to the vine, O my son, his ass, he shall wash in wine his cloak, and in the blood of grapes his tunic. ...(my own translation, leaning heavily upon Douay) ... for it seems in the fulfillment (cf. also what is not too silly in this note) that the figure was inverted: Christ's tunic was washed in his own blood, which he has also given his Church to drink under the appearances of wine.
This... point, that Jesus after being flogged was dressed again in his tunic, left me wondering why the soldiers who nailed him up were so eager to keep the cloth; in many paintings of the subject, Jesus' clothing appears all to be white, which may be symbol of his Divine purity, but they would not remain so, after he had borne the cross and fallen several times. To be sure, soldiers of any sort must know something about laundering out blood stains, but now I think either it was a miracle that Jesus was naturally able to walk to Golgotha at all, or the colour of the tunic was one in which a faded blood stain would not too much obtrude. Perhaps a deep purple, or violet, as Exodus prescribes for the priest's tunic?
Sanguis Christi, inebria me
0 comments:
Post a Comment