Our beloved St. John Paul II gave us an incredible treasure, the Theology of the Body, which revealed the age-old wisdom of the saints of the Church: though the Eucharist is the greatest Sacrament in terms of grace, the greatest sacramental sign is Marriage, since it images our ultimate calling, to unite with God forever in the next life. The Trinity is imaged by the human family, in that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are given a visible, although limited, image in man, woman, and child. Too, man to woman is a physical picture of Christ to the Church, or derivatively, Creator to creature spiritually. This unfathomable gift from God, that the second-most precious aspect of human nature, second only to our spiritual component of intellect and will of soul, is a picture of the deepest mysteries of our existence, was so incredibly unfolded and elaborated upon by the same Saint John Paul the Great[!], that it is said it will unpacked for centuries!
BUT, what if it doesn’t STOP THERE! What if, in fact, that just as it is said that Christ, in His Human Nature, is the Word of God INCARNATE, the Word of God made VISIBLE, that there is even FURTHER THEOLOGICAL MEANING to Christ’s Body than merely sexuality? What if unbelievable treasures await us in His five great Wounds, His Crucified feet and toes thereupon, and His Crucified hands and fingers thereupon? What if these profound signs on His Body, His very manner of death, image theological mysteries of truth, grace, sacraments, ecclesiology, and ages of humanity?
It may sound insane, but simply, come and see! Review these analogies with Catholic doctrine, sacraments, and history and you decide their veracity!
So come along and relax, read, and rejoice! God bless you if you find the time to read any or all!
Here is a summary of what we have so far, as we are going to expand it:
Theology of the Body Extended: Jesus' Crucified Hands and the Sacraments Part I
A Theology of Christ's Crucified Feet
The Arms of Jesus on the Extremes: Presumption and Scrupulosity
Now to expand: already, the two thieves imaged the two extremes of heretics: Pharisaical, or presumptuous,heretics and Innocent heretics, or fearful and tormented ones.
This was the two extremes of the hands of Jesus, right and left. The hands do the works of our hands, which are the works of our wills, which can only do the good of God by grace. And the sacraments are the supreme source of grace.Hence, the hands should reveal the sacramental mystery of heretics as concerns presumption and despair.
Now, heretics lose five of the seven sacraments, like the five fingers of the hand. We have seen that the main errors that cast the heretics to and fro, overall, can be summarized in the full theological implications of these five sacraments, that five that absolutely require the Episcopate. See the above article for details..
Presumptuous heretics predictably assume spiritual immunity to the issues of these five, whereas despairing heretics realize they need them to resolve their questions and fear but cannot get straight answers, and so cower in fear and tremble before the presumptuous heretics that torture them, kind of like the fifth trumpet.
Now, in the Passion of the Christ, the presumptuous thief is on the right arm side, and the despairing thief is on the left arm side. This makes sense, since presumptuous heretics have hard hearts, like the firm right arm that is stronger, whereas fearful heretics have soft hearts, like the weak left arm.
The Dislocated Shoulder and the Dislocated Right Heretics
NOW NOTE!!!! It is the RIGHT shoulder of Jesus that is dislocated in the crucifixion, and by the soldiers. What might that mean? The soldiers symbolize the world, the worldly wrath of Rome, the wrath of nature and evil. The shoulder of the arm it its base. The base beliefs of presumptuous heretics are their health and wealth Gospel, their presumption that they are going to heaven simply because they have made singular choice to follow Jesus, that if one suffers, it is because they deserve it and that God is angry with them, and that they have the truth but everybody else is perishing.
What can we say except that the "soldiers" of physical and moral evil, in the coming chastisement--when there is no rapture to rescue them from suffering--will dislocate the Pharisaical heretics, the proud ones on the right, by disrupting their vile, base lies that they found their twisted and despicable version of Christianity upon. Through it, Jesus is meriting in His wounded shoulder the future conversion of our New Testament Pharisees, the hyper-conservative Evangelicals.
As for the left arm, it is not dislocated because the innocent heretic is already shaken from his foundation, not knowing where to turn to find the truth and if he can attain mercy.
The Broken Legs
And what of the legs and feet?
There were saw that if our hands do the works of our wills, needing grace, and thereby sacraments, our feet walk the WAY. WHAT way? The way of TRUTH. "I am the WAY, the TRUTH, and the life!" Hence the feet, and the toes, and the legs, image the doctrine of the Church. We saw, then, that five sources of Catholic truth fall by the view of the world as the Church moves through history. The truth in the sources that are rejected gets less, but the evidence to support the sources as legitimate gets more. Hence, for the sources to be lined up by historical order on the x-axis, and we graph truth and evidence for legitimacy on the y-axis, then the truth line falls from left to right, while evidence rises left to right.
But this is how Middle Eastern toes are. The Egyptian model of the human foot, which was surely Jesus' version, is that the toes rise on one foot and fall on the other. Hence, when they are crucified on top of one another, the toes rise on one foot from one to end to one another, and in the same direction fall on the other foot.
So the soldiers break both theves' legs, but not Jesus, for He is already dead.
Now if the legs image truth and its characteristics--as in the stronger leg bears the characteristic of degree of truth for a source, which is is more important for a source, and the weaker leg bears the characteristic of evidence, which is less important--the thieves, each in presumption and scrupulosity, have faulty conceptions of truth, and without sound truth, a religion or ideology will be broken by its fault. Only fully truthful and wise communities can withstand the weather of the world. Hence, the heretics must be shown that their distorted view of reality cannot support them, and so their death is hastened is hastened by breaking their legs, breaking their corrupted sense of truth.. In this way, heresy will be destroyed in the chastisement.
But Jesus' legs are not broken, in that the Church weathers the storm. The Church does not need to be broken to find the truth, or to acquire grace. From the Apostiles until the end, the Church simply has the infallible truth and grace, and will never lose it.
Indeed however, she dies to self. For if Jesus died without being broken, in the way of truth, putting to death sin and inquity on the cross, how much more will the Church die like Christ and put to death sin and wickedness in the world as Jesus did 2000 years ago, when Our Lady will come to earth and reign spiritually in the hearts of men for her age of peace?
"In order to fulfill what had been written: not a bone of it shall be broken!"