MARK 15:38 — KING JAMES VERSION 0
“And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.”
The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom — the temple curtain (the inner veil separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple, or the outer curtain visible from outside) tears from top to bottom at the moment of Jesus' death. From top to bottom communicates divine origin — a human tearing would go from bottom to top. The tearing is the enacted theology of Hebrews 10:19–20: access to the presence of God is opened through Jesus' death. The curtain that marked the boundary between human and divine space is torn, permanently, by the death of the mediator.
Church Fathers on Mark 15:38
After the Evangelist has related the Passion and the death of Christ, he now goes on to mention those things which followed after the death of our Lord.
The veil of the temple is rent, that is, the heaven is opened.
Again, God by the rending of the veil implied that the grace of the Holy Spirit goes away and is rent from the temple, so that the Holy of holies might be seen by all; [ed. note: The sense of the passage by reference to Theophylact appears to be, that as the Jews used to rend their clothes as a sign of grief, so the temple by the rending of its veil might be said to mourn.] also that the temple will mourn amongst the Jews, when they shall deplore their calamities, and rend…
Read all 9 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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