When Jesus died on the cross, there was an earthquake. Rocks were split. The centurion and his soldiers who had carried out the crucifixion orders were afraid.

In the heart of the temple, in the "holy of holies", in the very heart of Jerusalem, the sacred veil tore, from top to bottom.

The veil, "rent in twain"...

The veils in the tabernacle and later in the temple were important. They're described in great detail in Exodus and in 1 Kings. In Arcana Coelestia 2576, it says that, "Rational truths are a kind of veil or clothing to spiritual truths.... The veil represented the nearest and inmost appearances of rational good and truth....

And now, as Jesus dies on the cross, the veil tears. What does this mean?

Here's how Swedenborg describes the symbolism of this:

"...that once all appearances had been dispelled, the Lord entered into the Divine Itself, and at the same time He opened a means of access to the Divine Itself through His Human that had been made Divine." (Arcana Coelestia 2576)

Think about four watershed spiritual events:

1) The creation of the physical universe. (Current best guess: 13.8 billion years ago). Genesis 1:1-10

2) The beginning of life. (On earth, between 3.5 and 4.5 billion years ago.) Genesis 1:11-25

3) The beginning of spiritually conscious human beings. (Reasonable guess: 100,000 years ago). Genesis 1:26-31

4) The incarnation and resurrection of the Lord God Jesus Christ (2000 years ago).

God's love and wisdom have been flowing into the universe for a long time. Where you might expect entropy, instead we see a universe that seems to favor life and intelligence. Think what a fulfilling moment it must have been when God could tell that human minds were now responding to Him, after all that outpouring.

But the free response-ability has tragedy baked in, because we can also choose not to respond, and to go the opposite way.

As we humans grew more "sophisticated", God used new channels to reach us, notably prophets and spiritual leaders, and later the written word. And in those channels, from the earliest times, there are already prophecies that the Lord would one day come into the world in human form.

Why did He need to do that? He must have foreseen that people would need to have that human level of connection, in order for enough good and truth to exist for us to make the decisions that open us to salvation.

Let's go back to Swedenborg's description:

"... once all appearances had been dispelled the Lord entered into the Divine Itself..."

Throughout the Lord's life on earth, there was the appearance that he was a man, like us. He had a human body. He could be tired and hungry. He could be tempted (though unlike us, he always won). In his spiritual life, there were times when he felt keenly the appearance of his human separate from his Divine essence. At other times, that appearance thinned, and he felt his divinity more powerfully. As he grew up, and was baptized, and began his ministry, he must have been growing more and more fully aware of what was going on inside him -- the glorification of the human part of him. With the death of his body on the cross, the bodily human-ness was no longer in the way. That appearance was dispelled. A new connection was fully forged between the Divine and the human.

And then, there's the second part of Swedenborg's statement:

"at the same time He opened a means of access to the Divine Itself through His Human that had been made Divine."

The veil was torn. The old religion, which had placed ritual above real good, and where God was invisible, separated from human knowledge by a veil -- was torn. New light could reach people, through the new teachings of the Lord. We could respond to a God who, in His Divine Human, we now could understand and approach and love more deeply.

9055. 'Burning for burning' means if anything of love and affection present in the inward part of the will [is injured]. This is clear from the meaning of 'burning' as injuring or wiping out the good of love. The reason for saying 'in the will' is that the good of love belongs to the will, whereas the truth of faith belongs to the understanding, 9050, 9051. And the reason for saying 'the inward part' of the will is that 'wound', dealt with below, means an injuring or the wiping out of an aspect of love present in the outward part of the will. Here, as in the previous paragraphs, injuries done both in the internal man and in the external man are dealt with. For injuring the inner part of the understanding is meant by 'eye' and injuring the outer part by 'tooth', and injuring the power of truth in the internal man is meant by 'hand' and injuring the power in the external man by 'foot', as has been shown; thus injuring the will in the internal man is meant by 'burning' and injuring the will in the external man by 'wound'.

[2] A person has inward and outward parts of his will, just as he has inward and outward parts of his understanding, which are dealt with in 9050, 9051. The inward part of his will resides where the inward part of his understanding resides, and the outward part of his will resides where the outward part of his understanding resides. They must be joined together; for where truth resides, so does good, and where good resides, so does truth. Truth without good is not truth, and good without truth is not good. For good is the essential being (esse) of truth, and truth is the manifestation (existere) of good; and the situation with a person's understanding and his will is the same, in that the understanding is dedicated to receiving truth and the will to receiving good. From this it is evident that when a person is being regenerated the Lord gives him a new understanding through the truths of faith, and a new will through the good of charity, and that both must be present and also joined together if the person is to be regenerate.

[3] The reason why 'burning' means injuring the good of love is that love is meant by 'fire', 934, 2446, 4906, 5071, 5215, 6314, 6832, 6834, 6849, 7324 (end), 7575, 7852; and what injures the good of love is evil desire blazing up from self-love. For this desire is called 'burning', 1297, 5215. Evil desire is also meant by 'branding' in Isaiah,

Instead of fragrance there will be rottenness, and instead of a girdle, a falling apart, and instead of well-set hair, baldness, and instead of a robe, a girding of sackcloth, branding instead of beauty. Isaiah 3:24.

This refers to 'the daughter of Zion', by which the celestial Church, that is, the Church governed by love to the Lord, is meant, 2362, 6729. 'Branding' here is evil desire stemming from self-love.

[4] Anyone who does not know that there is an internal sense in the Word thinks that the proud adornments worn by the daughters of Zion as described in verses 16-24 of that chapter mean such adornments, and that because of such things among the daughters of Zion the Jewish and Israelite people were to be punished and - as said in verses 25, 26 - to fall by the sword. But the reality is altogether different from this. The spiritual and celestial beauties of the Church are what are meant by those adornments. It becomes clear to anyone who reads the Word that 'the daughter of Zion' is not used in the Word to mean the daughter of Zion, provided that he turns to and considers those places in the Prophets where Zion and the daughter of Zion are mentioned. From these he will see that the daughter of Zion is the Church.