``Where
the Bishop is, there let the multitude of believers be;
even as where Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church'' Ignatius of
Antioch, 1st c. A.D
Feast of the Most Precious Blood
July 1 is the
Feast of the Most Precious Blood, beginning the month of July which
itself is
dedicated to the Most Precious Blood.
The feast originated in 16th century Spain, made its way to Italy, and
was extended to the entire Church in 1849 by Pope Pius IX, originally
for the first Sunday of July. Later, Pope St. Pius X moved it to July 1
(the
Novus Ordo calendar doesn't celebrate this feast at all).
The Precious Blood was prefigured in the Old Testament by the
sacrificing of the paschal lamb. While the Israelites were captive in
Egypt, God told Moses to kill a young, male lamb and smear its blood on
the doorposts and transoms of their homes. Exodus 12:13:
And the blood
shall be unto you for a sign in the houses where you shall be: and I
shall see the blood, and shall pass over you: and the plague shall not
be upon you to destroy you, when I shall strike the land of Egypt.
God passed over and avoided punishing those whose homes were covered by
the blood. And now, we who are covered by the Precious Blood shed by
Lord Christ are also liberated from being punished with death, the
wages of
our sins. The Blood He shed for us is our hope. Our only hope. Consider
the words of St. Peter from I Peter 1:18-20:
Knowing that you
were not redeemed with corruptible things as gold or silver, from your
vain conversation of the tradition of your fathers: but with the
precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb unspotted and undefiled,
foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but manifested in
the last times for you.
Father Frederick Faber beautifully and powerfully describes the
profound reverence we should have for Christ's life-giving and most
Precious Blood:
What strikes us
at the first thought of the Precious Blood? It is that we have to
worship it with the highest worship. It is not a relic at which we
should look with wonder and love, and which we should kiss with
reverence, as having once been a temple of the Holy Ghost, and an
instrument chosen by God for the working of miracles, or as flesh and
bone penetrated with that celestial virtue of the Blessed Sacrament
which will raise it up at the last day in a glorious resurrection.
It is something unspeakably more than this. We should have to
adore it with the highest adoration. In some local heaven or other, in
some part of space far off or near, God at this hour is unveiling his
blissful majesty before the angels and the saints. It is in a local
court of inconceivable magnificence. The Human Body and Soul of Jesus
are there, and are its light and glory, the surpassing sun
of that heavenly Jerusalem. Mary, his Mother, is throned there like a
lovely moon in the mid-glory of the sunset, beautified rather than
extinguished by the effulgence round her. Millions of lordly angels are
abasing their vast grandeur before the ecstatic terror of that
unclothed Vision of the Eternal. Thrills of entrancing fear run through
the crowds of glorified saints wdio throng the spaces of that
marvellous shrine. Mary herself upon her throne is shaken by an ecstasy
of fear before the mightiness of God, even as a reed is shaken by the
wind. The Sacred Heart of Jesus beats with rapturous awe, and is
glorified by the very blessedness of its abjection, before the
immensity of those Divine Fires, burning visibly in their overwhelming
splendors. If we could enter there as we are now, we should surely die.
We arc not strengthened yet to bear the depth of that prostrate
humiliation, which is needed there, and which is the inseparable joy of
heaven. Our lives would be shattered by the throbs of awe which must
beat like vehement pulses in our souls. But we know the limits of our
nature. We know, at least in theory, the abjection which befits the
creature in the immediate presence of its Creator.
We can conceive the highest adoration of a sinless immortal
soul as a worship winch it could not pay to any creature, however
exalted, however near to God. We can picture ourselves to ourselves,
prostrate on the clouds of heaven, blinded with excess of light, every
faculty of the mind jubilantly amazed by the immensity of the Divine
Perfections, every affection of the heart drowned in some forever new
abyss of the unfathomable sweetness of God. We know that we should lie
in sacred fear and glad astonishment before the throne of Mary, if we
saw it gleaning in its royalty. Yet we know also that this deep
reverence would be something of quite a different kind from our
abjection before the tremendous majesty of God.
But, if we saw one drop of the Precious Blood, hanging like
the least pearl of dew upon a blade of grass on Calvary, or as a dull
disfigured splash in the dust of the gateway of Jerusalem, we should
have to adore it with the selfsame adoration as the uncovered splendors
of the Eternal.
Indeed! But to some, the idea of reverencing Christ's Blood is
barbaric. Fr. M. F. Walz has this to say about that:
There are some,
perhaps, who are more repelled than attracted by the very name and
nature of the devotion to the Precious Blood. The idea of blood easily
suggests to them that some cruelty has been committed and that
consequently some life is ebbing out. "The life of the fiesh is in the
blood" (Lev. XVII, 11), and to see blood flow fills us instinctively
with horror. When Jesus promised to give us His flesh to eat and His
blood to drink, we know that "Many therefore of his disciples hearing
it, said: This saying is hard, and who can hear it? But Jesus, knowing
in himself, that his disciples murmured at this, said to them: Doth
this scandalise you? It is the spirit that quickeneth" (John VI,
61-64). It is true, the devotion to the Precious Blood does remind us
that pain was inflicted and that a life was sacrificed ; but we must
not forget also that it was divine Blood that was shed and that it was
the Man-God Who suffered and laid down His life for us. Let us confess,
too, with deep compunction, we sinners have been the cause of the
blood-shedding and death. Is this not the underlying reason why this
devotion contains this element of wholesome fear ? It was to wash away
our sins that this adorable Blood was spilt, and in answer to the words
of the prophet, "Why then is thy apparel red?" (Is. LXIII, 2) we may
reply with the beloved Apostle, because "He loved us, and washed us
from our sins in his own blood" (Apoc. I, 5). St. Bernard calls the
Blood of the Passion the roses of divine love.
The devotion to the Precious Blood brings us face to face
with two fundamental doctrines of our holy religion: fallen man in all
his misery, shut out from Paradise and Heaven, mourning and weeping in
this valley of tears; and Jesus, the Son of the living God, restoring
the child of perdition to the dignity of a child of God and heir of
heaven. An angel with a flaming sword guards the entrance of Paradise
lost; but Jesus in the crimson garment of His Blood, all aflame with
love, reopens the gate of Heaven for us.
A religion that is divorced from these basic truths is like a
nut that lacks a kernel. In our age of luxury and religious
indifference, men do not want to be reminded of moral regeneration, of
the necessity of struggling against the flesh, the world, and the
devil; they do not want to hear of their obligation to use the means of
salvation and thus co-operate with God's grace. This effem inate world
loathes a Church in which the Cross occupies a prominent place and in
which the Crucified is adored and implored for mercy.
Solid piety, genuine and lasting devotion, how ever, must
consist in the love of God, must be grounded on the dogmas of the
Church, must be rooted in a spirit of sacrifice and self-abase ment,
must contain a great love of Jesus Christ and His Church, must be
productive of practical charity, and must be willing to undergo
sufferings in submission to Divine Providence; otherwise our devotions
will easily become whimsical and evaporate into sentimentalism. ((They
have for saken me, the fountain of living water, and have digged to
themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water" (Jer. II,
13). While Moses was upon the mountain praying and receiving the ten
Commandments, the fickle-minded Israelites were dancing around the
golden calf of their own making. The vagaries of men's minds can never
replace the revealed truths of God; neither can the outward forms of
piety be a substitute for real and practical religion.
He who is so fastidious in his religious tastes as to feel
any aversion at contmplating or worshipping Christ in His Blood,
clearly shows that he is wanting in true love of Jesus.
Or let St. Paul explain it to you, as he did in I Corinthians 1:23-25:
[W]e preach
Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the
Gentiles foolishness. But unto them that are called, both Jews and
Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. For the
foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is
stronger than men.
Recommended, too, are these "Seven Offerings, in Reparation for all the
Outrages Received by Our Lord in the Precious Blood" from the Raccolta:
I
Eternal Father! I offer Thee the merits of the Precious Blood
of Jesus, Thy well-beloved Son, my Saviour and my God, for the
propagation and exaltation of my dear Mother, Thy Holy Church; for the
safety and prosperity of her visible head, our chief pastor the Bishop
of Rome; for the cardinals, bishops, and pastors of souls, and for all
the ministers of the sanctuary. Gloria Patri. Blessed and praised for
evermore be Jesus, Who hath saved us with His Blood.
II
Eternal Father! I offer Thee the merits of the Precious Blood
of Jesus, Thy well-beloved Son, my Saviour and my God, for the peace
and concord of Catholic kings and princes, for the humiliation of the
enemies of our holy Faith, and for the welfare of all Christian people.
Gloria Patri. Blessed and praised for evermore be Jesus, Who hath saved
us with His Blood.
III
Eternal Father! I offer Thee the merits of the Precious Blood
of Jesus, Thy well-beloved Son, my Saviour and my God, for the
repentance of unbelievers, the uprooting of heresy, and the conversion
of sinners. Gloria Patri. Blessed and praised for evermore be Jesus,
Who hath saved us with His Blood.
IV
Eternal Father! I offer Thee the merits of the Precious Blood
of Jesus,Thy well-beloved Son, my Savious and my God, for all my
relations, friends, and enemies; for the poor, the sick, and the afflicted, and
for all those for whom Thou, my God, knowest that I ought to pray, or
wouldst have me pray. Gloria Patri. Blessed and praised for evermore be
Jesus, Who hath saved us with His Blood.
V
Eternal Father! I offer Thee the merits of the precious Blood
of Jesus, Thy well-beloved Son, my Saviour and my God, for all who this
day are passing to the other life; that thou wouldst save them from the
pains of hell, and admit them quickly to the possession of thy glory.
Gloria PatriI. Blessed and praised for evermore be Jesus, Who hath
saved us with His Blood,
VI
Eternal Father! I offer Thee the merits of the Precious Blood
of Jesus, Thy well-beloved Son, my Saviour and my God, for all those
who love this great treasure, for those who join with me in adoring it
and honouring it, and for those who strive to spread devotion to it.
Gloria Patri. Blessed and praised for evermore be Jesus, Who hath saved
us with His Blood.
VII
Eternal Father! I offer Thee the merits of the Precious Blood
of Jesus, Thy well-beloved Son, my Saviour and my God, for all my
wants, spiritual and temporal; in suffrage for the holy souls in purgatory, and
chiefly for those who were most devout lovers of this Blood, the price
of our redemption, and of the sorrows and pains of our dear Mother,
most holy Mary. Gloria Patri. Blessed and praised for evermore be
Jesus, Who hath saved us with His Blood.
Glory be to the Blood of Jesus, now and for ever, and
throughout all ages! Amen.
As to music, the hymn Salvete
Christi Vulnera
(Hail, holy Wounds of Jesus, hail) is the perfect for the
day:
Salvete Christi
vulnera,
Immensi amoris pignora,
Quibus perennes rivuli
Manant rubentis Sanguinis.
Postquam sed ille tradidit
Amans volensque spiritum,
Pectus feritur lancea,
Geminusque liquor exilit.
Ut plena sit redemptio
Sub torculari stringitur,
Suique Jesus immemor,
Sibi nil reservat Sanguinis.
Venite, quotquot criminum
Funesta labes inficit:
In hoc salutis balneo
Qui se lavat, mundabitur.
Summi ad Parentis dexteram
Sedenti habenda est gratia,
Qui nos redemit Sanguine,
Sanctoque firmat Spiritu.
Hail, holy
Wounds of Jesus, hail,
Sweet pledges of the saving Rood,
Whence flow the streams that never fail,
The purple streams of His dear Blood.
Brighter than brightest stars ye show,
Than sweetest rose your scent more rare,
No Indian gem may match your glow,
No honey’s taste with yours compare.
Portals ye are to that dear home
Wherein our wearied souls may hide,
Whereto no angry foe can come,
The Heart of Jesus crucified.
What countless stripes our Jesus bore,
All naked left in Pilate’s hall!
From His torn flesh ow red a shower
Did round His sacred person fall!
His beauteous brow, oh, shame and grief,
By the sharp thorny crown is riven;
Through hands and feet, without relief,
The cruel nails are rudely driven.
But when for our poor sakes He died,
A willing Priest by love subdued,
The soldier’s lance transfixed His side,
Forth flowed the Water and the Blood.
In full atonement of our guilt,
Careless of self, the Saviour trod—
E’en till His Heart’'s best Blood was spilt—
The wine-press of the wrath of God.
Come, bathe you in the healing flood,
All ye who mourn, by sin opprest;
Your only hope is Jesus’ Blood,
His Sacred Heart your only rest.
All praise to Him, the Eternal Son,
At God’s right hand enthroned above,
Whose Blood our full redemption won,
Whose Spirit seals the gift of love.
For a non-liturgical, car-singing song, it's hard to beat "Nothing but
the Blood of Jesus," a song written by a Baptist minister in 1876, but
with inoffensive lyrics Catholics can sing with no qualms. Here is a
version by Guy Penrod:
What can wash
away my sin?
Nothing but the Blood of Jesus
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the Blood of Jesus.
Chorus:
O precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow
No other fount I know
Nothing but the Blood of Jesus
Nothing but the Blood of Jesus.
For my cleansing this I see
Nothing but the Blood of Jesus
For my pardon this my plea
Nothing but the Blood of Jesus.
Nothing can for sin atone
Nothing but the Blood of Jesus
Naught of good that I have done
Nothing but the Blood of Jesus.
This is all my hope and peace
Nothing but the Blood of Jesus
This is all my righteousness
Nothing but the Blood of Jesus.
Now by this I'll overcome
Nothing but the Blood of Jesus
Now by this, I'll reach my home
Nothing but the Blood of Jesus.
Glory! glory! thus I sing
Nothing but the Blood of Jesus
All my praise to this I bring
Nothing but the Blood of Jesus.
A symbol for the day is that of the pelican, about which the Aberdeen
Bestiary says,
It is devoted to
its young. When it gives birth and the young begin to grow, they strike
their parents in the face. But their parents, striking back, kill them.
On the third day, however, the mother-bird, with a blow to her flank,
opens up her side and lies on her young and lets her blood pour over
the bodies of the dead, and so raises them from the dead.
In a mystic sense, the pelican signifies Christ; Egypt, the
world. The pelican lives in solitude, as Christ alone condescended to
be born of a virgin without intercourse with a man. It is solitary,
because it is free from sin, as also is the life of Christ. It kills
its young with its beak as preaching the word of God converts the
unbelievers. It weeps ceaselessly for its young, as Christ wept with
pity when he raised Lazarus. Thus after three days, it revives its
young with its blood, as Christ saves us, whom he has redeemed with his
own blood.
You will find pelicans in many Christian works of art and literature --
--- including St. Thomas Aquinas'shymn, Adoro Te Devote. Gerard Manley
Hopkins's translation of the relevant verse:
Bring the tender
tale true of the Pelican;
Bathe me, Jesu Lord, in what Thy bosom ran
Blood whereof a single drop has power to win
All the world forgiveness of its world of sin.
Another symbol for the day is the Chalice, or the "Holy Grail," if you
prefer, the fate of which no one knows, but about which many legends
have arisen. Tradition tells us that St. Joseph of Arimathea, the
rich man who allowed Christ to be placed in a tomb he owned, went to
England after the resurrection and became a Bishop in Glastonbury. The
earliest of the Holy Grail stories, a trilogy written in the late 12th
century by Robert de Boron, tells how Joseph brought the Holy Grail
with
him. These stories later evolved into the 15th century "Le Morte
D'Arthur" and other Arthurian tales most have at least some passing
familiarity with. To read the original De Boron stories, look for a
book called "Merlin and the Grail: Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin,
Perceval: the Trilogy of Prose Romances Attributed to Robert de Boron"
(ISBN-10: 0859917797). It's available for reading but not for
downloading at the Internet Archive.
Finally, a good habit you might consider adopting is to call on the
Precious Blood when blessing yourself with holy water: "By this Holy
Water and by Your Precious Blood, Lord Jesus, wash away all my sins."
For further reading, see these books, in pdf format, from this site's Catholic Library:
Glory be to
Jesus!
Who in bitter pains
Pour’d for me the life-blood
From his sacred veins.
Grace and life eternal
In that Blood I find;
Bless’d be his compassion,
Infinitely kind!
Bless’d through endless ages
Be the precious stream,
Which from endless torment
Doth the world redeem.
There the fainting spirit
Drinks of life her fill ;
There, as in a fountain,
Laves herself at will.
Oh, the Blood of Christ!
It soothes the Father's ire,
Opes the gate of heaven,
Quells eternal fire.
Abel’s blood for vengeance
Pleaded to the skies,
But the Blood of Jesus
For our pardon cries.
Oft as it is sprinkled
On our guilty hearts,
Satan in confusion
Terror-struck departs.
Oft as earth exulting
Wafts its praise on high,
Hell with terror trembles,
Heaven is filled with joy.
Lift ye, then, your voices;
Swell the mighty flood;
Louder still and louder,
Praise the Precious Blood!
St. Augustine
Excerpt from
Tractate 120 (John 19:31-20:9)
1. After that the Lord Jesus had accomplished all that He foreknew
required accomplishment before His death, and had, when it pleased
Himself, given up the ghost, what followed thereafter, as related by
the evangelist, let us now consider. The Jews therefore, he says,
because it was the preparation (parasceve), that the bodies should not
remain upon the cross on the Sabbath day (for that Sabbath day was an
high day), besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that
they might be taken away. Not that their legs might be taken away, but
the persons themselves whose legs were broken for the purpose of
effecting their death, and permitting them to be detached from the
tree, lest their continuing to hang on the crosses should defile the
great festal day by the horrible spectacle of their day-long torments.
2. Then came the soldiers, and broke the legs of the first, and of the
other who was crucified with Him. But when they came to Jesus, and saw
that He was dead already, they broke not His legs: but one of the
soldiers with a spear laid open His side, and immediately came there
out blood and water. A suggestive word was made use of by the
evangelist, in not saying pierced, or wounded His side, or anything
else, but opened; that thereby, in a sense, the gate of life might be
thrown open, from whence have flowed forth the sacraments of the
Church, without which there is no entrance to the life which is the
true life. That blood was shed for the remission of sins; that water it
is that makes up the health-giving cup, and supplies at once the laver
of baptism and water for drinking. This was announced beforehand, when
Noah was commanded to make a door in the side of the ark, whereby the
animals might enter which were not destined to perish in the flood, and
by which the Church was prefigured. Because of this, the first woman
was formed from the side of the man when asleep, and was called Life,
and the mother of all living. Truly it pointed to a great good, prior
to the great evil of the transgression (in the guise of one thus lying
asleep). This second Adam bowed His head and fell asleep on the cross,
that a spouse might be formed for Him from that which flowed from the
sleeper's side. O death, whereby the dead are raised anew to life! What
can be purer than such blood? What more health-giving than such a wound?
