Christian Art | Jesus Is Crucified
Office Of Readings | Week 19, Tuesday, Ordinary Time | A Reading From The Treatise Of Theodoret Of Cyr On The Incarnation Of The Lord Jesus | By His Wounds We Are Healed
‘By his wounds we are healed.’
Theodoret takes his starting point from Isaiah 53, the ‘Suffering Servant’ passage, which early Christians read as a direct prophecy of Christ’s passion. The language of wounds, bruises and chastisement is interpreted not as a description of punishment deserved by Jesus himself, but as the cost he bore to heal humanity. For Theodoret, the cross is not only an act of endurance but also a medicine—a deliberate remedy for the sickness of sin.
He illustrates the work of salvation with a pastoral image. Just as a shepherd might keep one sheep close to guide the others home, so the eternal Word took on human nature to draw humanity back from danger. By uniting himself to our nature, Christ became the visible, tangible means by which God led his people from ‘bad pastures’ into the safety of divine life.
Theodoret links the passion to the resurrection. The sufferings and death of Christ were not the end but the breaking of ‘age-old tyranny’—a phrase that points to the power of death and corruption over humankind. When Christ’s body, described as the ‘temple’ in John 2:19–21, was raised, it served as a pledge of what God intended for all believers: freedom from decay, suffering, and mortality.
He presents the risen Christ as speaking directly to the faithful, promising that just as his own human nature was made incorruptible by union with divinity, so they too will share in immortality. The logic is that what is true of Christ’s humanity will also be true for those joined to him, since they are united to the same life-giving source.
The final section of the passage connects these promises to baptism. Theodoret emphasises that baptism is not merely a ritual but a participation in Christ’s death, echoing Romans 6:5. It is through this sacramental union that believers share both in the dying and the rising of Jesus, receiving the assurance of resurrection life.
The reading is tightly woven around three movements: the passion as healing, the resurrection as promise, and baptism as the means of sharing in that promise. For Theodoret, each is inseparable from the others; together they form the pattern of salvation.
A Reading From The Treatise Of Theodoret Of Cyr On The Incarnation Of The Lord Jesus | By His Wounds We Are Healed
Our Saviour’s passion is a healing remedy for us, as the prophet teaches when he cries out: He bears our sins and suffers pain for us, and we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But for our sins he was wounded, for our iniquities he was bruised; upon him fell the chastisement that brought us peace, and by his wounds we are healed. We had all gone astray like sheep, and therefore he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and was dumb like a sheep before its shearer.
When a shepherd sees that his sheep have scattered, he keeps one of them under his control and leads it to the pastures he chooses, and thus he draws the other sheep back to him by means of this one. And so it was when God the Word saw that the human race had gone astray: he took the form of a slave and united it to himself, and by means of it won over the whole race of men to him, enticing the sheep that were grazing in bad pastures and exposed to wolves, and leading them to the pastures of God.
This was the purpose for which our Saviour assumed our nature, this was why Christ the Lord accepted the sufferings that brought us salvation, was sent to his death and was committed to the tomb. He broke the grip of the age-old tyranny and promised incorruptibility to those who were prisoners of corruption. For when he rebuilt that temple which had been destroyed and raised it up again, he thereby gave trustworthy and firm promises to those who had died and were awaiting his resurrection.
Jesus tells us: ‘Just as my human nature, which I took from you, has won its resurrection in virtue of the Godhead that dwelt in it and with which it was united, just as this nature has shed decay and suffering and passed over to incorruptibility and immortality; so, in the same way, you too will be set free from the grievous slavery of death; you too will cast aside your corruptible nature and your sufferings and you will be clothed with impassibility.’
To this end he imparted the gift of baptism to all mankind through his apostles. Go, he said, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Baptism is a kind of symbol and type of the Lord’s death, which is why Paul says: If we have shared with God’s Son in a death like his, we shall certainly share in his resurrection.
A Brief Biography Of Theodoret Of Cyr
Theodoret of Cyr (c. AD 393–c. 466) was a bishop, theologian, and biblical commentator in the Roman province of Syria, serving as bishop of Cyr (modern-day al-Nabk, Syria) from around 423. Educated in Antioch and influenced by the Antiochene school of exegesis, he became known for his careful, historical interpretation of Scripture and his defence of orthodox Christology during the theological controversies of the fifth century. Theodoret played a prominent role in the debates surrounding Nestorianism and the Council of Chalcedon (451), advocating for a clear distinction between Christ’s divine and human natures while maintaining their unity in one person. His extensive writings include biblical commentaries, apologetic works, and theological treatises, many of which sought to clarify the Incarnation and counter heretical teachings. Despite periods of political and ecclesiastical opposition, he remained a respected figure in the Eastern Church and is remembered for his learning, pastoral leadership, and contributions to the development of Christian doctrine.
Christian Prayer With Jesus Christ
Lord Jesus Christ,
You bore our wounds and carried our sorrows,
leading us from the barren fields of sin into the pastures of your life.
By your death you broke the power of corruption,
and by your resurrection you opened the way to immortality.
Through the waters of baptism you have joined us to your cross and your rising.
Grant that we may walk in the freedom you have won,
clothed in the hope of the life to come,
until we share the glory you have promised.
Amen.
Glossary Of Christian Terms
Passion – The suffering and death of Jesus Christ, particularly his arrest, trial, crucifixion, and burial.
Suffering Servant – A figure described in Isaiah 52–53, interpreted by Christians as a prophecy of Christ’s sacrificial death.
Corruption – In theological terms, the state of decay and mortality resulting from sin.
Incorruptibility – The state of being free from decay, mortality, and the effects of sin.
Impassibility – The condition of being unable to suffer or be affected by pain; attributed to the risen life of Christ and the redeemed.
Baptism – The Christian sacrament of initiation, involving water, which unites the believer with the death and resurrection of Christ.
Temple – Here used by Christ as a metaphor for his body, which would be destroyed (in death) and rebuilt (in resurrection).
Age-old tyranny – A phrase describing the reign of sin and death over humanity before Christ’s victory.
‘Death,’ says His Grace, ‘throws it all apart. For we are not as we should be. Faith requires our adjustment to God’s truth. God’s triumph in a very real sense requires in us the loss of our everything. Which, as with Mary at the other end of Jesus’s life, is God’s truth.’ The Gospel reading is of John 11: 1-45, which is a long passage, and His Grace’s homiletic theme commences in textual wilderness. Our brokenness – in this place – a family home. Our faith, our doubt, our death… The irruption – death, doubt, fear – within our precious scenes and our most intimate places. Our domesticity. His Grace speaks from the chair, as is a bishop’s prerogative, and says: ‘So much is obscure in the Gospels. We’re always reaching through them. We’re never there. Really, we never are. Our knowledge, our understanding, of the Gospels is never complete, and with each reading comes a new revelation. There are always new riches there. Just as there are between all of us, between myself and you. The Gospels are living texts. This is a part of the conversation we have with our own Christianity. It is a part of who we are in our relationship with Jesus. We are in this sense always on the brink. ‘So yes, there is plenty that doesn’t seem to make sense. As one of the order of bishops, we would be lying if we said that weren’t the case. They are not easy texts to encounter, if by that word we may signify something more than a superficial glancing off against, but rather a profound search for the word of God. The Gospels are written by people who had their own ideas, and often didn’t know what had really happened. Luke is quite explicit on this point. His is an investigation, from the explicitly claimed point of view of an historian, rather than that of a first-hand witness, who attempts, so he says, to set out an orderly account, out of the chaos, the sheer muddle, that has been handed down to him. It is possible to imagine Luke researching and composing his account after many years, when there has arisen a desire to know what exactly happened, and this implies a certain call to faith and certain demands of historicity, to historical exactitude. So in these different ways, the people of the first years of Christian faith are in the dark. There is also a decisive need to define the life of Jesus. And people didn’t get Jesus. The whole meaning of Christianity is only now beginning to take root throughout the composition. So much needs to be evangelized. The light shines almost in tentative fashion like that first star, which drew the wise men from the east to our Lord’s cradle. ‘John’s is widely held to be a very late Gospel. There are others who say that John’s Gospel might have been the first to acquire its true shape, because it most fully expresses Jesus, as we know him to be, as members of the Catholic Church. We don’t really know when any of this is being written, but we get a feel in John of a Gospel refined over many years, through a community. So there’s a lot going on there that I’d like you to think about. ‘What I would like to suggest to you is that, while within the Gospels we are often confronted with clues, guesswork, stories that have been handed down through so many people, and so in this sense we might find ourselves to be in the wilderness, this is the very desolate space itself to which we must give ourselves in order to experience Christ’s full redemption in our lives. I suggest it is for God’s glory that we do so. ‘As we become aware of ourselves, in this seminary, we find ourselves in a very secure, comfortable setting, and there are signs of Easter everywhere. Within the very fabric of these buildings, our Lord is risen; our Lord lives. But now this is our Lenten journey, where death enters, where death breaks us. We are to ride into Jerusalem in triumph, and then we are to be utterly broken, all hope gone, our hope extinguished. And really, I suggest to you, it is only by inhabiting this thought, as if we don’t know Easter is there, that our new life can follow, just when we have given up all hope, when every promise that Jesus made to us seems to have been cancelled. ‘And here now we have the story of Lazarus. I should like to suggest to you that we have a very powerful call now. In our very comfortable space, our domesticity, with all this comfort, where so very little might seem to happen each day, so it might seem to you, there is a disturbance within all of this comfort, and that is a disturbance within ourselves, and that is our call to Jesus. I think it is correct to say that our most comfortable places break in the light of Jesus from the inside, in order that we may take the necessary steps to be with Jesus. ‘Faith is not comfortable. I think that we can all receive the message of the rolling away of the rock from the tomb of Lazarus to say something of vital importance to ourselves concerning our openness to God’s love. The rock we roll away can come in all sorts of guises, but we know when we are blocked, and I firmly believe if we are truthful then we know where those blocks might be. ‘Next Sunday, which will be Palm Sunday, we process as it were to Jerusalem, to begin our Holy Week. Now as I speak to you we are on the brink. Even now, I suggest it might be very good for all of us to lay aside what we think we know, to fall apart a little, and so […]
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