[Question:]{.underline} Why do crucifixes show Our Lord as woundless, with the exception of his hands, feet and side?
[Answer:]{.underline} The manner of representing Christ on the Cross has changed over the centuries. During the first centuries of our era, when the horror of crucifixion was still known, Christ was never depicted on the Cross. It would have been too horrifying to depict the full extent of His sufferings as a crucified man when people could still see and recall how brutally cruel this really was. The Cross was depicted alone as the symbol of the Faith, especially after the victory of Constantine at the Milvian Bridge in 312, when he beheld in the heavens, above the sun, a cross of light, around which were the words “In this sign you shall conquer.” It was soon thereafter that the Church ornamented and decorated it with precious jewels.
It was only in the middle ages, when crucifixion was no longer known, that crucifixes began to depict Christ dying on the Cross. But even then, they were very stylized, such as the well known crucifix of St. Francis, and there was no attempt to depict even the due proportions of His body, let alone the depth and extent of the human sufferings of Christ.
Since the Renaissance, various schools have attempted to depict the physical sufferings of Christ much more accurately, including the five principal wounds. However, the aim was to show symbolically the sufferings of the Lamb of God, upon whose shoulders the Lord God laid “the iniquity of us all” (Is 53:6). It did not pretend to be a literal representation of everything He suffered. In the past century, however, studies on the shroud of Turin, Our Divine Savior`s winding sheet, have enabled artists to depict our Divine Savior`s sufferings more accurately. They can, for example, place the nails precisely at the right place, at the wrist, and the feet one over the other. They can include some of the many scourges, with which Our Divine Savior`s body was lacerated, as well as the wounds from the crown of thorns and the falls on the Way of the Cross. However, few have been able to capture all the pain and agony of those hours on the Cross, and none (with the shameful exception of Michaelangelo) have dared to depict our Divine Savior, as He really was, bearing the utter humiliation of being entirely stripped and naked.
If there is certainly a place for depicting more accurately our Divine Savior`s sufferings, it is not the only nor even the principal purpose of the Crucifix. It is to show the instrument on which God made man vanquished the devil; it is to show the depth of His love; the grandeur of His humility; the kindness of his Holy Face. It is most importantly a symbol of the heroic virtue and charity by which our Divine Savior purchased us back from our sins. Consequently, it does not have to show all His anguish and sufferings as much as it must clearly indicate His ineffable goodness.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.