The Sacrament of Baptism.
Eucharistic Feast.
On the wall opposite the doorway, the central scene is a feast wherein seven men are seated at a table, partaking of fish and bread; and there is a history in the last chapter of St. John’s Gospel, of which it may be taken as a literal representation. It was when our Lord “showed Himself to His disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, and He showed Himself, after this manner. There were together Simon Peter and Thomas who is called Didymus, and Nathanael who was of Cana of Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two others of His disciples”—seven in all. “And they went a-fishing, but caught nothing. Jesus appeared to them on the shore.” Then there follows the miraculous draught of fishes; and as soon as they came to land, they saw “hot coals lying, and a fish laid thereon, and bread. Jesus saith to them, Bring hither of the fishes which you have now caught. And Jesus cometh and taketh bread and giveth them, and fish in like manner.” Such is the letter of the gospel narrative; but this narrative is in fact a mystical and prophetic representation of the Church gathered together out of the waters of the world, and fed by the Holy Eucharist. The hundred and fifty-three great fishes that were caught represent the large numbers of the faithful that were drawn into the Church by apostolic preaching; the fish laid on the hot coals is Jesus Christ in His Passion, His Body “delivered for us” on Mount Calvary, given to us also to be our food in the Blessed Sacrament whereby “we show the death of the Lord until He come.” The faithful caught in the net of the Church must be brought to that broiled fish (Piscis assus, Christus passus, says St. Augustine), that crucified Lord, and they must be incorporated with Him by partaking of the living Bread which came down from Heaven.
Sacrifice of Isaac.
Resurrection of Lazarus.
Such is the full meaning of the scene at the Sea of Tiberias, as interpreted according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers; and the adjuncts of this picture show that it was intended to be so understood here also; for on one side is the figure of the consecration already described; and on the other, the sacrifice of Isaac by his father, which was surely a most lively type of the sacrifice of Christ upon the altar; wherein blood is not really shed, but the Lamb is only “as it were slain,” just as Isaac was not really slain, but was received back from the dead, “for a parable.” Lastly, as has been mentioned before, there follows on the third wall of the same chamber the natural complement of the rest; the doctrine of the Resurrection, as contained in the fact of the rising again of Lazarus. Thus, this whole series of paintings, executed at the end of the second century, or within the first twenty or thirty years of the third, and repeated (as has been said) in several successive chambers, was a continual homily, as it were, set before the eyes of the faithful, in which they were reminded of the beginning, progress, and consummation of their new and supernatural life.
We do not say that every modern Christian who looks at these paintings will thus read their meaning at once; but we believe that all ancient Christians did so, because it is clear from the writings of the Apostles themselves and their successors, that nothing was more familiar to the Christian mind of those days than the symbolical and prophetical meaning of the facts both of the Old and of the New Testaments. They believed the facts themselves to have taken place just as they are recorded, but they believed also that they had a mysterious signification, whereby the truths of the Christian faith were insinuated or expressed, and that this was their highest and truest meaning. “Perhaps there is no one recorded miracle of our Lord,” says St. Gregory, “which is not therefore selected for recording because it was the type of something to happen in the Church;” and precisely the same was felt to be true also of the histories of the patriarchal and Jewish dispensations. “All these things had happened to them in figure, and they were written for our correction, upon whom the ends of the world are come.”