By His Wounds We Are Healed: Honoring the Five Sacred Wounds of Jesus

“Yet it was our pain that He bore, our sufferings He endured. We thought of Him as stricken, struck down by God and afflicted, but He was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes us whole, by His wounds we were healed.^” (Isaiah 53:4-5)

One of the blessings of sharing on Catholic365 is that as I research to verify what I “know,” I learn additional things that I didn’t know! …And that is precisely what happened as I prepared for this article about devotion to the Five Sacred Wounds of Jesus.

On Divine Mercy Sunday, the Gospel of St. John (20:26-28) calls our attention to the Five Wounds of Jesus, which He suffered on the Cross; wounds which remain visible on His Glorified Body.

As proof of His Resurrection, Jesus invited St. Thomas to examine His Wounds, saying:

“Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” (John 20:27)

Then Jesus invited us, too, to believe, when He said to St. Thomas:

“Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” (John 20:29)

One of the Saints who has especially helped me to be more conscious of all the wounds suffered by Our Blessed Savior during His Passion is St. Bridget of Sweden, named by St. Pope John Paul II as a co-patron of Europe. For a number of years, I prayed the “Fifteen Prayers of St. Bridget," prayers that Jesus had given St. Bridget in the Jubilee Year 1350, when she was praying before a Crucifix.

After the last of the “Fifteen Prayers,” which have been prayed by the faithful since the Middle Ages, prayers which Pope Pius IX approved, there is the following beautiful conclusion in which five Our Fathers are interspersed between the two final prayers:

“O sweet Jesus, wound my heart, that tears of penitence and love may be my food night and day, and bring me entirely to Thee, that my heart may ever be habitable for Thee, and my conversation pleasing and acceptable to Thee; and the end of my life so praiseworthy, that after the close of this life, I may deserve to praise Thee with all Thy saints forever. “

[Five Our Fathers]

“O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, receive this prayer in that most exceeding love wherewith Thou didst bear all the wounds of Thy most sacred Body, and remember me Thy servant, and to all sinners, and all the faithful, living and dead, give mercy, grace, remission, and eternal life. Amen.”

Regrettably over the years, I have grown lax –and ultimately stopped praying the “Fifteen Prayers,” even though I loved them so much. Yet, there is one aspect of the devotion that I have maintained. I still pray those ending five Our Fathers, which I do first thing when I enter a Church before Mass, and greet Jesus in the Tabernacle.

Sometimes, too, when I pray the Sign of the Cross in connection with the Stations of the Cross, I think of Jesus’ Five Wounds associated with the Crucifixion—plus a sixth (the crown of thorns, which I understand from presentations on the Shroud of Turin, was more like a woven-basket than a ringlet of thorns).

Here’s how I connect making the Sign of the Cross with the remembrance of the Lord’s Five Sacred Wounds:

As my fingers touch my forehead, I think of the Crown of Thorns; as my fingers touch my chest/sternum, I think of the nail(s) that pieced both His Feet; as my fingers touch my left shoulder, I think of the nail that pierced His left Hand; as my fingers touch my right shoulder, I think of the nail that pierced His right Hand; and as my fingers touch my chest/sternum, again, I think of the lance that pierced the Lord’s Sacred Heart, being thrust through His Sacred Side.

Although none of the online versions of the “Fifteen Prayers” that I found, including this one from EWTN , included both ending prayers (and the instruction to pray five Our Fathers) quoted previously, the print copy of the “Revelations of St. Bridget: On the Life and Passion of Our Lord and the Life of His Blessed Mother” by TAN Books, which is the version I used to pray, fortunately does.

According to Jesus’ revelations to St. Bridget (which as private revelations, we are not bound to believe), He suffered more than 5,400 blows to His Sacred Body during His Passion. (Among those thousands of physical wounds suffered throughout His Passion, Jesus shared with St. Bernard of Clairvaux that along His painful Way of the Cross, it was a shoulder wound that pained Him most of all.)

Our Lord told St. Bridget that by praying one Our Father and one Hail Mary in conjunction with each of the “Fifteen Prayers” daily for one year, each of the wounds He suffered during His Passion would be honored.

Everything to this point, I knew. …Here’s what I didn’t know.

According to the online Catholic Encyclopedia, praying five Our Fathers and five Hail Mary’s in honor of the Five Wounds of Jesus was a popular Medieval devotion; so much so that church bells rang midday on Fridays to remind the faithful to pray those prayers for that intention.

Also, according to the online Catholic Encyclopedia, praying five Our Fathers in conjunction with the five decades of the Rosary is also a way of honoring the Five Wounds of Jesus. In fact, before St. John Paul II added the Luminous Mysteries, when there were 3 Mysteries (Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious), praying all three mysteries every day of the year would yield the same total number of yearly Our Fathers, as did praying the Our Fathers along with the Fifteen Prayers of St. Bridget each day for one year.

On this Jubilee Divine Mercy Sunday, let us be grateful for the Lord’s Infinite Mercy forever made visible on His Glorious Body--Five Wounds reflected in the Divine Mercy Image. Let us respond with love to His wounded Hands raised in blessing and in calling our attention to the white and blue rays coming forth from His Sacred Heart--signifying His Precious Blood and Water shed at the piercing of His Sacred Side--and to His pierced Feet, walking toward us.

Jesus, we trust in You!

“Yet it was our pain that He bore, our sufferings He endured. We thought of Him as stricken, struck down by God and afflicted, but He was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes us whole, by His wounds we were healed.^” (Isaiah 53:4-5)