There’s a great deal to behold during the Paschal Triduum, especially on Good Friday. For example, the liturgy’s first reading from the prophet Isaiah begins, “See [Ecce], my servant shall prosper, he shall be raised on high and greatly exalted” (52:13). During the Gospel of St. John, we hear Pilate’s command to “Behold, the man!” [Ecce, homo!] (19:5). At the showing of the cross, the priest again calls us to look: “Behold, the wood of the cross!” [Ecce Lignum Crucis!]. And as at every Mass, at Good Friday’s liturgy the priest-celebrant shows us the host before communion, calling upon us to “Behold the Lamb of God” [Ecce, Agnus Dei].
So much to see—but only for those with eyes to see and ears to hear (Matthew 13:16-17). It’s this last command—“Behold the lamb of God!”—that we can focus on this upcoming Triduum to our benefit. For this gem of a phrase unlocks a great treasure of meaning in our liturgical and spiritual lives.
The Scholastic maxim that “grace builds upon nature” is a firm foundation from which to start our insights, for the natural world knows a great deal about lambs. In our Northern Hemisphere, at least, the wise farmer wishes for his lambs to be born in the spring, when grass begins to grow, water begins to flow, and light and warmth return. (Lambing in mid-winter is a much more difficult task.) And when these new lambs appear, they are the model of innocence, purity, and new life—as anyone who has held a newborn lamb, heard its newly discovered bleating, or watched its carefree jumping and playing can attest. Even the skies appreciate a lamb in their midst, as the springtime Aries constellation (the ram) takes center stage.
Lambs continue to figure prominently in the Old Testament. Consider Abel, who offered to God “the best” of the lambs of his herd—and was himself “sacrificed” to God for his actions. Abraham’s only son, Isaac, was led to the base of Mount Moriah (where Jerusalem would later sit) on a donkey, carried the wood of his own sacrifice up the hill, but at the last was replaced with a lamb hanging in a tree. Later still, God would commission Moses to offer “two yearling lambs as the sacrifice established for each day; one lamb in the morning and the other lamb at the evening twilight” (Exodus 29:38-9). Accordingly, the prophet Isaiah (as we’ll hear on Good Friday) will liken Jesus to “a lamb led to the slaughter” (53:7). And, as St. John will also tell us in his Good Friday gospel, Jesus the Lamb of God began his journey up Golgotha “about noon” on the day of preparation for Passover (19:14)—the time when the Passover lambs began to be sacrificed in the Temple.
Of course, the cross is not the last word on God’s lamb. St. John continues to behold great sights in heaven—including “a Lamb that seemed to have been slain” (Revelation 5:6). Nevertheless, this heavenly lamb is described as “standing” “triumphant” amidst worshiping angels and elders at the throne. Near the end of the Book of Revelation, we’ll see the lamb not only standing but celebrating: making merry at his marriage to his bride, the Church (19:7-9).
To “Behold the Lamb of God,” then, is to behold a great deal about Christ. But the phrase is also a chance to consider our own lives through, with, and in him. Indeed, if what Gaudium et Spes teaches is correct—that “Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and his love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear” (22, emphasis added)—then to “Behold the Lamb of God” is to see something of ourselves in him.
We hear in the first verses of the Book of Genesis (1:27) how man was made in the “image and likeness” of God (don’t worry: if you haven’t read these lines from the beginning of the Bible recently, the Church will proclaim them as her first reading at the Easter Vigil). Sin, of course, effaces at least in part that divine image in us. The great restorer of that image is Christ. To adapt a phrase: Christ looked like us so that we might look like him—a standing, victorious Lamb. And the font of that restoration is the womb of the Church. Herself born of the side of the Lamb upon the cross, the Church’s womb—the baptismal font—regenerates divinity in our fallen humanity. “We men are conceived twice,” St. Didymus of Alexandria says in the Office of Readings: “to the human body we owe our first conception, to the divine Spirit, our second…. Visibly, through the ministry of priests, the font gives symbolic birth to our visible bodies. Invisibly, through the ministry of angels, the Spirit of God, whom even the mind’s eye cannot see, baptizes into himself both our souls and bodies, giving them a new birth” (Monday of the Sixth week of Easter). Our first gestation took place in the amniotic waters of our biological mothers: our new gestation takes place in the amniotic waters (amnos, some say, means “lamb”) of our supernatural Mother, the Church.
Whether you are 25, 45, 65, or 85, the sacred liturgy presents to attentive souls mysteries of great meaning. “Behold”—said four times on Good Friday—should make our ears perk up and our eyes light up. “Behold the Lamb of God” should draw us ever deeper into the reality of Christ our redeemer, and make us more aware of ourselves, those whom he came to redeem. As we celebrate Holy Week and the Sacred Paschal Triduum this year, may we enter its liturgies with eyes and ears wide open for a grace-filled encounter with the Lamb of God.
