Posted on 07/01/2004 10:49:29 AM PDT by AskStPhilomena
Today is the Feast of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It was six months ago today that the New Year began with the Feast of the Circumcision, the first time in which the Most Precious Blood of Jesus was shed on this earth. We thus begin the second half of Anno Domini 2004 by commemorating liturgically the Blood whose shedding made possible our regeneration in the baptisal font and the Blood whose merits are poured out on us as a laver of redemption every time we avail ourselves of the Sacrament of Penance. The entire month of July is devoted to the Most Precious Blood of Jesus.
The Most Precious Blood of Jesus was pumped through His arteries by His Most Sacred Heart, Which was formed out of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. There was for a period of nine months, as the unborn Jesus developed in the tabernacle of His virginal and immaculate Mother's womb, an interchange of the blood between Mother and Son, making Our Lady, who gave the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity His Sacred Humanity by the power of the Holy Ghost, the first to receive the Most Precious Blood of the Divine Redeemer. She received from Him what she had given Him, signifying the tremendous and mysterious--nay, almost impenetrable--union that existed between the Theandric Person and herself, who had been conceived immaculately and thus preserved from all stain of Original and Actual Sin. The Most Precious Blood Our Lady gave to her Divine Son would be splattered on her as she watched Him shed every single drop of It to redeem us on the Wood of the Holy Cross.
The Most Precious Blood of Jesus has replaced the blood of goats and bulls and lambs, which was a mere foreshadowing of the Blood of all telling that would be shed for the many so that the lintels of the doorposts of their souls could be signed with It, the Blood of the Paschal Lamb, and thus avoid the angel of eternal death and damnation when they gave up their spirits and breathed their last in this vale of tears. It alone has the power to forgive sins and to regenerate eternal life in the souls of the faithful who seek out Its infinite and inexhaustible merits in the confessional. We receive the Most Precious Blood of Jesus every time we receive Holy Communion. Every single particle of a consecrated Host is the entirety of the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the God-Man, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We are thus not only healed of sin by the Most Precious Blood of Jesus; we are nourished unto eternity by It.
Our Lord poured out His Most Precious Blood for us to pay back for us in His Sacred Humanity the blood debt of Adam's sin that was owed to Him in His Infinity as God. One drop of His Most Precious Blood at the Circumcision would have been good enough to redeem us. He chose, though, to undergo the events of His fearful Passion and Death so as to show us, His rational creatures who are frequently so ungrateful and lukewarm, the depth of His love for us and to show us that we must be ready to shed our blood, both figuratively and literally, for Him and His Holy Church. And we must be ready to give unto the others the forgiveness that was poured out over us in the Sacrament of Baptism and is poured over us by the merits of the Most Precious Blood, applied to us in time by the words and actions of an alter Christus acting in persona Christi, repeatedly in the Sacrament of Penance. We must never be slow to offer others the Mercy that was won for us by Our Lord's emptying Himself completely of the substance that made His human life possible, His Most Precious Blood.
As was portrayed so well in The Passion of the Christ and has been described thoroughly in any number of books and the accounts of mystics, such as the soon-to-beatified Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich, Our Lord shed His Most Precious Blood in the Garden of Gethsemane when capillaries burst in His head and His extremities as He underwent His Agony, seeing at that time all of the sins of all human beings, including yours and mine, for all eternity. The very thought of coming into contact in His Sacred Humanity with the antithesis of His Sacred Divinity, sin, caused Him to sweat droplets of Blood. Huge quantities of His Blood was shed during the Scourging at the Pillar. Indeed, one of the most moving sins in The Passion of the Christ occurred when the actress playing Our Lady took towels given her by Pontius Pilate's wife to sop up the Blood that had been spilled during the scourging. (One cannot help but wonder the prophetic implications of this: how much of Our Lord's Most Precious Blood has been spilled and not sopped up as a result of the distribution of Holy Communion under both Species in the Novus Ordo Missae?) More Blood was shed during the Crowning and as Our Lord walked on the Via Dolorosa to Calvary. It is nothing short of miraculous that He did not die of a loss of His Most Precious Blood, no less the shock His Body endured from the Scourging, before He was nailed to the gibbet of our salvation, the Holy Cross. The pouring forth of that Most Precious Blood and water from His Pierced side after He had breathed His last signifies the very sacramental elements of the Church.
The Most Precious Blood of Jesus is made present in every Sacrifice of the Mass, which is the unbloody re-presentation or perpetuation of the Sacrifice of the Cross. Simili modo postquam caenatum est, accipiens et hunc praeclarum Calicem in sanctas ac venerabiles manus suas, item tibi gratias agens, benedixit, deditque discipulis suis, dicens: Accipite, et bibite ex eo omnes: HIC EST ENIM CALIX SANGUINIS MEI, NOVI ET AETERNI TESTAMENTI: MYSTERIUM FIDEI: QUI PRO VOBIS ET PRO MULTIS EFFUNDETUR IN REMISSIONEM PECCATORUM. Indeed, the Sacrifice offered by the priest, the sacerdos who acts in persona Christi, in Holy Mass is completed when He consumes the Chalice containing the Most Precious Blood of the Divine Redeemer. The miracle of the Incarnation of the God-Man under the appearances of bread and wine on altars of sacrifice in Catholic churches should fill us with gratitude for receiving the grace to be Catholic--and thus to have been baptized and to have daily access to the Most Precious Blood in the Eucharist and to Its merits in the Sacrament of Penance.
During this month of July, therefore, it is a good practice to pray regularly the Litany of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus, meditating upon each of the invocations, so laden with hidden treasures for contemplation and reflection. And it is good to remember that Our Lady, the Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of all graces, wants us always to stand by the foot of her Divine Son's Cross in Holy Mass so that we will receive worthily the same Most Precious Blood that she received when He was in her womb and that she soaked up and was splattered by as He made it possible for us to have an unending Easter Sunday of glory in Paradise if we persist until the end with that Blood signed on the lintels of the doorposts of our hearts and souls.
Most Precious Blood of Jesus, save us.
Our Lady, Mother of Divine Grace, pray for us.
The Litany of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.
God, the Father of Heaven, have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on us.
God, the Holy Ghost, have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, One God, have mercy on us.
Blood of Christ, only-begotten Son of the Eternal Father, save us .
Blood of Christ, Incarnate Word of God, save us .
Blood of Christ, of the New and Eternal Testament, save us.
Blood of Christ, falling upon the earth in the Agony, save us.
Blood of Christ, shed profusely in the Scourging, save us.
Blood of Christ, flowing forth in the Crowning with Thorns, save us.
Blood of Christ, poured out on the Cross, save us.
Blood of Christ, price of our salvation, save us.
Blood of Christ, without which there is no forgiveness, save us.
Blood of Christ, Eucharistic drink and refreshment of souls, save us.
Blood of Christ, stream of mercy, save us.
Blood of Christ, victor over demons, save us.
Blood of Christ, courage of Martyrs, save us.
Blood of Christ, strength of Confessors, save us.
Blood of Christ, bringing forth Virgins, save us.
Blood of Christ, help of those in peril, save us.
Blood of Christ, relief of the burdened, save us.
Blood of Christ, solace in sorrow, save us.
Blood of Christ, hope of the penitent, save us.
Blood of Christ, consolation of the dying, save us.
Blood of Christ, peace and tenderness of hearts, save us.
Blood of Christ, pledge of eternal life, save us.
Blood of Christ, freeing souls from purgatory, save us/
Blood of Christ, most worthy of all glory and honor, save us.
Lamb of God, who take away the sins of the world, spare us, O Lord!.
Lamb of God, who take away the sins of the world, graciously hear us, O Lord!
Lamb of God, who take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
V. You have redeemed us, O Lord, in your Blood.
R . And made us, for our God, a kingdom.
Let us pray. Almighty and eternal God, you have appointed your only-begotten Son the Redeemer of the world, and willed to be appeased by His Blood. Grant we beg of you, that we may worthily adore this price of our salvation, and through Its power be safeguarded from the evils of the present life, so that we may rejoice in Its fruits forever in heaven. Through the same Christ our Lord. R . Amen.
Father Lawrence C. Smith sent the following reflections on the Most Precious Blood of Jesus from the writings of Saint Augustine:
A suggestive word was made use of by the Evangelist, in not saying: "He pierced His side," or, "He wounded," or anything like that, but: "He opened"; that therein might, as it were, be thrown open the door of life, from which have flowed forth the Sacraments of the Church, without which there is no entrance into life that is truly life. The Blood that was shed, was shed for the remission of sins. That water makes up the health-giving cup; and gives at the same time a bath and a draught. This was announced beforehand, when Noe was commanded to make a door in the side of the ark, through which the animals, not destined to perish in the flood, might enter, and by which the Church was prefigured. Because of this, the first woman was made from the side of the man while he slept, and she was called Life and Mother of the living. For the name signified a great good, before the great evil of her sin. This second Adam bowed His head and fell asleep on the Cross, in order that from there a spouse might be formed for Him, even from that which He shed from His side as He slept. O death, by which the dead live again! What is purer than His Blood? What is more health-giving than this wound? -- St. Augustine of Hippo, Treatise 120 on St. John
Men were held in slavery under the devil and served demons; but they have been redeemed from captivity. For they could sell themselves, but they could not redeem themselves. The Redeemer came, and paid the price; He shed His Blood, and bought the world. Do you ask what He bought? See what He gave, and you will find out what He bought. The Blood of Christ is the price. What is it worth? What, but the whole world? What, but all the nations? Very ungrateful for their price, or very proud, are they who say that the price is of such small worth as to buy only the Africans; or that they are so great, that it was given for them alone. Therefore, let them not rejoice, or be proud. What He gave He gave for the whole world. -- St. Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Psalm 95, no. 5
He had blood by which to redeem us; and to this end He took blood that He might shed it in order to redeem us. If you wish it, the Blood of your Lord was given for you; if you do not wish it, it was not given for you. For perhaps you will say: "My God had Blood, with which He redeemed me, but now since He has suffered, He has given it all; what has remained to Him, that He may also give for me?" This is a great thing, because He gave once, and He gave for all. The Blood of Christ is salvation for him who wishes it, punishment to him who does not wish it. Why, therefore, do you hesitate to be set free from the second death, you who do not wish to die? By this you are set free, if you are willing to take up your cross, and follow the Lord; for He took up His Cross and looked for His servant. -- St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 31
Thank you, Father Smith!
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