From Morning Prayer: How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of him who brings good news,
who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,
who publishes salvation,
who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” Isaiah 52:7

As we await, in Advent, Christ’s healing touch on this world, the image of the wounded foot may seem odd in term’s of Isaiah’s prophetic vision of “the feet of him who brings good news.”

But, it is through these wounds we are healed. Christ took the ugliest aspects of this world and used them to create surpassing beauty, a beauty that conquers even death.

When I see these wounds, or picture Christ upon the cross, I do not see the macabre. I see unimaginable beauty given for us all. I see the feet of him “who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’”

As Thomas A Kempis tells us in “The Imitation of Christ,” these wounds are our entry into the interior life, where we dwell in Christ’s presence: “If you do not know how to meditate on heavenly things, direct your thoughts to Christ’s passion and willingly behold His sacred wounds. If you turn devoutly to the wounds and precious stigmata of Christ, you will find great comfort in suffering, you will mind but little the scorn of men, and you will easily bear their slanderous talk.”

Oh Christ, My Lord, give me the peace of your wounds. Give me the courage to be wounded for your Kingdom, and to build on earth a world in which your children are wounded no more. Amen.