“Peers” is commonly used to denote people of equal standing, background, or abilities, such as colleagues at work or friends at school. It also refers to people of high position with aristocratic titles such as barons and earls. The criminals are peers in their lives and deaths, but the one who submits to Jesus is inducted into the peerage of disciples and believers to live in eternal joy.

NIV explains that water and blood from Jesus’ side is due to the spear penetrating the sac around the heart (pericardium) followed by the heart itself. With death, plasma separates from the thicker cell-containing blood, hence the combination of a clear liquid (water) and thicker blood. A spear lanced into the pleural (lung) cavity would have the same results.

John’s observation, however, is recorded as symbols to the spiritual significance of imparting life and redemption in baptism and the Eucharist. Along this spiritual and metaphoric vein, not only has Jesus been pierced, so too has Mary, Jesus’ mother. From a distance, she peers through the throng to see her son suffer and die. Mary would have to endure the piercing pain and agony of her own breaking heart.

Who do we see with us on common grounds at the cross—people piercing Jesus, peering at him from a distance, or new peers speaking to him at his side? Whatever our socio-economic, ethno-cultural, educational-occupational or spiritual-religious upbringings, we belong to the same broken humanity yearning for redemption and healing. Are we not all neighbours, one family, and in some way peers? In these days of the pandemic, if we are not pierced by empathy and compassion for each other, if we do nothing, we are in fact piercing the side of Jesus.