St. Philip Neri and the Wound We Cannot Leave

Abiding in the Open Side

“Let us concentrate ourselves so completely in the divine love, and enter so far into the living fountain of wisdom, through the wounded Side of our Incarnate God, that we may deny ourselves and our self-love, and so be unable to find our way out of that Wound again.”

— St. Philip Neri

Philip tells us to enter the Wound and lose the way back out. It is not a metaphor meant to stir passing devotion but a command to relocate the whole of our life. Concentrate yourselves so completely in the divine love that self love cannot survive. Enter so deeply through the wounded Side that you cannot retrace your steps to the old life built on reputation, security, control, or wounded memory.

Thomas stands before the Risen Christ with the weight of shattered hope still clinging to him. He had seen the nails. He had watched love crucified. The reports of resurrection sounded like fragile consolation against the brutality of what he knew to be real. When Christ comes to him He does not argue. He does not shame. He opens Himself. Put your hand into my side. Thomas does not merely verify a fact. He enters the torn flesh of Mercy and collapses into confession. My Lord and my God.

Here Philip and Thomas meet. The Wound is the place of truth. Doubt is not overcome by explanation but by proximity. Self love is not healed by admiration of Christ from a distance but by entering where His Heart has been pierced open. To abide in the Lord is to remain there. Not to visit in moments of fervor. Not to preach about it while quietly preserving the ego. Not to build a religious identity around the Cross while refusing to pass through it.

We have spoken before of living out of Him alone and not out of the things of this world whether praise or betrayal, success or humiliation. The Open Side is the only place where such freedom becomes possible. When the hand is placed within the Wound, what becomes of the need to be understood. What becomes of the restless desire to secure the future. What becomes of the memory of injuries suffered and the subtle nourishment drawn from them. In that Wound the old sources of life are exposed as empty. Blood and water flow and a new life begins that is hidden with Christ in God.

Philip dares to say that we should be unable to find our way out again. This is the scandal. We want to enter and exit at will. We want consolation without surrender. We want the sweetness of intimacy with Christ while retaining the architecture of self. But the Wound is a narrow gate. Once entered it dismantles the illusion that we can live by our own light. It becomes the dwelling of the heart. The living fountain of wisdom is not a stream of ideas but participation in crucified love.

Thomas touched once and believed. We are invited to remain and be remade. To seek life in Him alone means that every hunger is brought there. Every humiliation is brought there. Every longing for hiddenness and every temptation to assert ourselves is laid within that pierced Heart. There self love dies quietly and the soul begins to breathe another air.

Abide there. Not as a concept. Not as a devotional image. But as one who has placed his hand into the Open Side and found that there is no other life worth living. My Lord and my God.