ABSTRACT
The monastic culture of St Dunstan’s time approached Scripture through the inherited techniques of spiritual interpretation implicit in the liturgy and in the contemplative prayer of lectio divina. Being drawn to God is the purpose of the contemplative life. Chiefly, it enabled St John to be shown, as he is in the fourth gospel, as a model of the true disciple, a pattern of how to look on the Cross and be drawn to Christ. The depiction of Christ’s side wound and the presence of his mother and beloved disciple at the foot of the Cross are details from St John’s gospel, the account of the Passion read during the Good Friday ceremonies. For monastic contemporaries the connection between John’s account of the Crucifixion and his closing apocalyptic vision would already have been familiar through standard exegesis on the wound in Christ’s side.
