I — THE MOST PRECIOUS BLOOD

Presence of God. — O Jesus, who redeemed me with your Blood, grant that your Blood may produce in me all its fruit.

Meditation

1 — From today’s liturgy the figure of Jesus springs forth majestic, like that of a king presenting himself to his people in the splendor of his royal mantle: “Who is this,” sings the Office of the day, “who comes... with garments stained, splendid in his robe?” (Roman Breviary). But the mantle Christ wears is not resplendent with fine linen or purple, but with blood, his Blood, shed for our sins: “He is clothed in a garment dipped in blood, and his name is ‘the Word of God’” (ibid.). That Blood which the Word, becoming incarnate, took from our human nature, He gave all back to us as the price of our ransom. And He gave it back not compelled by anyone, but freely, because He willed it, because He loved us: “Christ has loved us,” says St. John, “and has washed us from our sins in his Blood” (Apoc. 1:5). All the mysteries of our redemption are mysteries of love and all, therefore, urge us to love; but the one we meditate on today has a particularly moving note, since it leads us to consider Redemption under its most bloody aspect: the shedding of Jesus’ Blood which, from Calvary, comes down to crimson the whole world, to water all souls. “Not by the blood of goats or calves,” exclaims St. Paul in the Epistle, “but by his own Blood Christ gave us redemption,” a reality which, if we truly understood it, would be more than enough to make of us authentic saints. We must have the “sense” of Christ’s Blood, of that Blood which He poured out for us to the last drop, of that Blood which, through the sacraments - particularly confession - continuously comes down to water our souls, to wash them, to purify them, to enrich them with the infinite merits of the Redeemer. “Bathe yourselves in the Blood, drown yourselves in the Blood, clothe yourselves in the Blood of Christ” was the unceasing cry of Catherine of Siena.

2 — In the Office of the day St. Paul warmly invites us to correspond to Christ’s gift: “Jesus, to sanctify the people by his Blood, suffered outside the gate. Let us then go out to Him bearing his reproaches.” If we want Christ’s Blood to bear in us all its fruit, we must unite ours to it. Only his is most precious, so precious that one drop is enough to save the whole world; yet Jesus wills, as always, that we add our little part, our contribution of suffering, of sacrifice, “bearing his reproaches.” If we are sincere, we must well recognize that we flee Christ’s reproaches with all our power. If sometimes a simple lack of consideration, a small wrong, a cutting word is enough to make us bristle, how can we say we know how to share in Jesus’ humiliations? Behold the divine Master treated like an evildoer, dragged amid the coarse mockeries of soldiers outside the gate of Jerusalem and there crucified between two thieves. And we? What part do we take in his Passion? In what way do we share his reproaches?

For our redemption “Jesus endured the cross, despising its shame... And you,” St. Paul reproaches, “have not yet resisted unto blood in your struggle against sin” (Heb. 12:2, 4). Can we say we know how to struggle “unto blood” to conquer our defects, our pride, our self-love? Oh, how weak and cowardly we are in the struggle, how imprudent and indulgent with ourselves and above all with our pride! Jesus, most innocent, punished in Himself our sins unto a bloody and shameful death. We, guilty, do not know how to chastise ourselves, I do not say unto blood, but not even unto the denial of our self-love. Here is the blood Jesus asks of us to unite with his: the blood that flows from full and sincere denial of our ego, from humble and generous acceptance of all that mortifies our ego, that weakens it, destroys it. The most precious Blood of Jesus will give us strength for this, “because the soul that inebriates itself and drowns itself in the Blood of Christ clothes itself in true and real virtues” (St. Catherine of Siena).

Colloquy

“O sweetest loving Jesus, to make my soul stronger and take from it the weakness into which it had fallen through sin, You have surrounded it all around with a wall, having soaked its mortar with the abundance of your Blood, which Blood causes the soul to be united and confirmed in the divine sweet will and charity of God! And as, to unite stone to stone, one uses mortar mixed with water, so You, O God, have placed in the midst, between creature and You, the Blood of your only-begotten Son, mixed with the living lime of the fire of most ardent charity; so that there is no Blood without fire, nor fire without blood. Your Blood was shed, O Christ, with the fire of love!” (St. Catherine of Siena).

Yes, I adore You, O most precious Blood of Jesus, flower of creation, fruit of virginity, ineffable instrument of the Holy Spirit. And I exult thinking that, coming from the drops of virginal blood upon which love impressed its movement, you were assumed by the Word and deified in his Person. I am moved with intimate tenderness, thinking how from the Heart of the Virgin you passed into the Heart of the Word and, animated by the breath of divinity, became adorable because you are the Blood of Christ. I adore you enclosed in Jesus’ veins, preserved in his Humanity like manna in the golden urn, memorial of eternal redemption wrought by Him in the days of his mortal life. I adore you, Blood of the new and eternal Testament, flowing from Jesus’ veins in Gethsemane, from his scourged flesh in the Praetorium, from his pierced hands and feet, from his opened side on Golgotha. I adore you in the sacraments; I adore you in the Eucharist, where I know you are contained substantially.

In you I place my trust, O adorable Blood, our price and laver. Distill gently into wayward hearts and soften their hardness. Wipe away, O adorable Blood of Jesus, wipe away our stains, save us from the wrath of the destroying angel. Irrigate the Church; make her fruitful in wonder-workers and apostles; enrich her with holy souls, pure and radiant with a divine beauty” (St. Albert the Great).