The Month of July and the Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ

It is a praiseworthy custom to recite every day in July the beautiful Litany of the Precious Blood. “Save us!” we will repeat while invoking the redeeming Blood, because “[we] were not redeemed with corruptible things, as gold and silver, ... but with the Precious Blood of the unspotted Lamb” (1 Pt. 1:17, 19). 

To shed one’s blood for Jesus Christ or for one’s fatherland is to give one’s life. In shedding His Blood, Jesus gave His life so that we might have Eternal Life. 

The hymn for Vespers on the Feast of the Precious Blood is a magnificent doctrinal and spiritual synthesis of the mystery of our redemption. Let us read each of its verses attentively:

May the crossroads resound with festive song;
May the citizens’ faces beam with joy.
Let them advance with a burning torch in hand,
In an orderly procession, young and old.

 

Christ, dying on the rough tree of the Cross,
Shed His Blood through His many wounds. 
When we commemorate and celebrate this,
We ought to shed tears, at least.

 

By his sin, the old Adam
Had afflicted the human race with terrible ruin.
The New Adam, by His innocence and love,
Restored life to one and all.

 

If the Almighty Father from highest heaven
Heard the powerful cry of His Son in agony,
Much more must He have been appeased by His Blood
And have granted us forgiveness.

 

Whoever dips his garment in this Blood 
Washes away its stains, and it takes on
A purple hue that suddenly makes him
Like the Angels and pleasing to the King.

 

Let no one waver now or stray from the right path; 
Rather, let us arrive at our final destination,
Where God, who helps us to run the race,
Will confer on us the noble prize.

 

Be merciful, O Almighty Father: 
Lift up to the highest heavens those 
Whom Thou hast purchased by the Blood
of Thine Only-begotten Son,
And create them anew by the Spirit of peace. Amen. 

At every Mass, we are present at the ineffable mystery of the transubstantiation of the wine into the Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The chalice that the priest elevates after pronouncing the words of consecration contains the Precious Blood of the Redeemer that flowed on the Cross. 

Taking as our inspiration the beautiful commentary by Reverend Father Pierre Lebrun1, let us dwell for a moment on the consecration of the Precious Blood: 

In like manner, when the supper was done, taking also this honorable chalice into His holy and venerable hands, again giving thanks to You, He blessed it, and gave it to His disciples, saying: All of you take and drink of this: 

For this is the Chalice of My Blood of the new and eternal covenant: the Mystery of faith: which shall be shed for you and for many unto the forgiveness of sins. 

As often as you shall do these things, in memory of Me shall you do them. 

In like manner, when the supper was done: 

After eating the Paschal Lamb and partaking of the first cup,2 Our Lord took the cup of thanksgiving, the one that will be the true Eucharistic chalice.3 Indeed, the adorable Blood that it contains is, together with His Most Holy Body, the most excellent gift that we can present to God in thanksgiving for all the benefits that He bestows on us unceasingly, and to obtain all the other blessings that the faithful will need until the end of the ages. 

Taking also this honorable chalice into His holy and venerable hands: 

This Chalice of the Last Supper on Holy Thursday was subsequently used by Saint Peter until Saint Sixtus II; it was then rescued by Saint Lawrence and, after a long voyage, was venerated in the Cathedral in Valencia.4 This chalice no longer contains the shadows and figures of the Law, but rather the Precious Blood that was signified by them. Christ’s hands are holy5 and venerable, and endowed with His Father’s almighty power. 

Giving thanks to You, He blessed it: 

through the blessing of this chalice, Jesus Christ calls down upon its contents all the power necessary to change the wine into His Blood. 

He gave it to His disciples, saying: All of you take and drink of this: 

It was necessary for those with whom Jesus made the New Covenant for the whole Church should drink of it. Indeed they all drank of it.6 And it is necessary for the priests who renew this covenant and this sacrifice, which Christ instituted then, to drink of it too. The Church saw in these words a precept which obliges all priests who celebrate Mass to receive communion during it under both species (the Host and the Blood in the chalice); she acknowledged that there is no precept with regard to the laity or the priests who might receive communion in church without personally offering the sacrifice. Saint Paul points out to us this difference on the subject of communion under one species, presenting the alternative of the Body or the Blood, of eating or of drinking: “Whosoever shall eat this bread, OR drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord.”7

For this is the Chalice of My Blood of the new and eternal covenant: 

The celebrant changes now from narration to the language of someone who performs an action: the act of making the redeeming Blood present by Christ’s power. 

This is the Blood of the New Testament or of the new and everlasting covenant. Jesus Christ, the Mediator, came to make a new covenant between God and mankind; the old covenant was only a figure of this. This old covenant was made on Mount Sinai through the ministry of Moses, who was its mediator. In it God gave the precepts of the Law to the Israelites and promised to look on them as His chosen people, separated from all the other nations on earth, if they kept His precepts.8 They promised to be faithful to them. Moses took the blood of the animal victims and sprinkled some of it on the people while saying: “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you.” 

But this covenant was a prophetic prefiguration and was to last only for a time. The Messiah, who had been announced and prefigured by Moses, comes to seal the new covenant, or the New Testament, and He confirms it here, not with the blood of animals, but with His own Blood. The blood of the first covenant could produce only an external, symbolic purity; the deluded scribes and Pharisees in the Gospel were contented with that; the Blood of the new covenant is the real, true source of interior purity. And so the blood of the first covenant was sprinkled only externally on the Jews with whom God made the covenant; but in order to receive the Blood of the new covenant interiorly, the disciples have to drink it. This is why Jesus Christ, in the greatest of all miracles, decided to give His Blood to His Apostles, and made of it in advance, before His death, a genuine and actual outpouring (although it is mystical), according to the Greek text of the evangelists: which is poured out for you. This is the reason why Jesus Christ said to His Apostles: Drink of it, all of you, for this is my Blood of the new covenant. Jesus Christ established this covenant, after fulfilling all the prefigurations and eating the Paschal lamb. He did this at a banquet, as covenants are ordinarily made, by issuing His last will and testament, because only by the infinite merits of His death9 can His faithful people receive the eternal inheritance promised by this new covenant. He did this by leaving to the Church, in the person of the Apostles, His Body and Blood, with the power to produce them until the end of the ages. And this covenant is renewed every day in the Blood of the eternal covenant, in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. This covenant is thus new and eternal, because it will never be changed, as it was foretold by the prophets10 and confirmed by the Apostles. 

The Mystery of faith: 

This phrase is not in the Gospel, and that should not surprise us, because the evangelists did not write down everything (Saint Matthew is the only one who records the expression enim, “for”). And as Pope Innocent III remarks, Saint Paul and the other Apostles often reported some facts and words that were then omitted by the evangelists. Thus the Church received from Tradition the particular expressions that we find in the canon of the Mass: Raising his eyes to heaven, eternal, and Mystery of faith. All these words are in the oldest sacramentaries11 of the Roman Church, and they must be among the truths that Jesus Christ explained to His Apostles between His resurrection and His ascension. 

The word mystery means a secret. This is the sense in which it is taken by Saint Paul when he speaks about the mystery of faith, which the deacons must hold with a pure conscience,12 about the “mystery which hath been hidden and prepared before all ages” [cf. Col 1:26], about “the mystery of Jesus Christ, which was not revealed to the children of men in former times.” Now the greatest of all mysteries and, so to speak, the whole secret of the faith, the whole secret of religion, is that the Blood of a God had to be shed for the salvation of the world. This mystery contains all these truths: that sins are not remitted without the shedding of blood13; that the blood of sinners was unworthy to be offered to God; that ever since the time of Abel, animal sacrifices have been offered for the sins of mankind; nonetheless it was impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins; that a holy victim was needed in order to sanctify men, the Blood of a God who had become man in order to reconcile them and unite them to God. This is the great Mystery hidden until the death and resurrection of the Messiah, the Mystery shown by Jesus Christ Himself to the disciples on the road to Emmaus: “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and so to enter into His glory?”14 The blood that was shed in all the sacrifices in the world had never been more than a shadow and a figure of this Mystery. This Mystery was revealed by Saint John, who calls Jesus Christ “the Lamb which was slain from the beginning of the world,”15 and by Saint Peter in his First Epistle: “You were redeemed ... 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” [1 Pet 1:18-20]. The Blood of Jesus Christ contained in the chalice is therefore the mystery of faith par excellence. 

Which shall be shed for you and for many unto the forgiveness of sins: 

The faithful, who must be without any serious sin in order to feed on the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, and in order to have a share in the heavenly kingdom, are sanctified only by this adorable Blood, shed for them on Good Friday. The Greek text explains by saying which is shed for many, a distinction which is made in the present prayer of offering the redeeming Blood at every Mass. 

The Savior said that He would shed His Blood for the Apostles, pro vobis, for you and for all who will believe and convert, pro multis, for many, and not pro omnibus, for all (nor for the multitude, an ambiguous term) because the salvation of mankind, unfortunately, is not universal. Although He very truly died for all human beings, since His sacrifice has an infinite value, Saint Paul says that “God is the Savior of all men, especially of the faithful.”16 This truth sometimes shocks our contemporaries, yet the teaching of the Apostles leaves no doubt: “Know you this...: that no fornicator or unclean or covetous person (which is a serving of idols) hath inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.”17 These words echo the saying of Christ Himself: “Then they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds, with great power and glory. And then shall He send His angels and shall gather together His elect.”18 “When the Son of man shall come in His majesty, and all the angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the seat of His majesty. And all the nations shall be gathered together before Him: and He shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats. And He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on His left. Then shall the king say to them that shall be on His right hand: Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.... Then he shall say to them also that shall be on His left hand: Depart from Me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels.... And these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just, into life everlasting.”19

As often as you shall do these things: 

Jesus Christ gave priests the power to do what He did, and they can exercise it as often as it is appropriate. Saint Ephrem cries out: “What intellect can lift itself so high as to understand the greatness of the priestly dignity and is this not the place where we must exclaim with Saint Paul: O incomprehensible depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God!” Saint John Chrysostom says, “Consider in the priest the hand of Jesus Christ that operates invisibly, for man is not the one who produces the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ on the altar of consecration.” The words are pronounced by the priest, but they are consecrated by the power of God and by His grace; in other words, the words have all their validity from the power of God who, in His Goodness, makes them efficacious. Saint Ambrose remarks, along with the Church Fathers and the Council of Florence, that at the moment of the consecration, the priest no longer speaks in his own person, but in Persona Christi, in the Person of Jesus Christ, using His own words. 

In memory of Me shall you do them: 

priests must perform this excellent action in memory of the Divine Savior, in other words, to proclaim His death until He comes at the end of the world, and to renew the memory of His immense Love which moved Him to give His life for mankind. 
 

“[Our Lord] loved me and delivered Himself for me,” Saint Paul writes to the Galatians (2:20), and He renews His oblation for us in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with the same Love. 

How can we love Him in return? 

By showing complete trust in Him and by striving to avoid sin. 

May Our Lady help us to do this. 

The Blood of Jesus was originally that of the Blessed Virgin. 

Obviously, we cannot say that Mary’s blood is itself divine. The divine character of the Precious Blood comes from the hypostatic union of Christ’s human nature with His divine nature. There is no human reality comparable to the infinite value of the Blood of the Son of God. 

“I will stop there, because the bell calls me; I go to the winepress of the church, to the altar. In that place continually streams the sacred wine of the blood of this delicious, unique grape with which very few have the opportunity to be inebriated.” –Padre Pio. 

• 1R. P. Pierre Lebrun, Explication des prières et cérémonies de la Sainte Messe.
• 2See Lk. 22.
• 3From the Greek word eucharistia, thanksgiving. The expression “thank you” in modern Greek, phonetically “efiaristo,” is from the same root.
• 4See Bertrand Labouche, Le Saint Graal ou le vrai Calice de Jésus-Christ (Éditions Chiré).
• 5“Which of you shall convince Me of sin?” (Jn. 8:46)
• 6The Fathers of the Church and theologians are divided as to whether or not Judas received communion.
• 71 Cor 11:27.
• 8Ex 19:5.
• 9See Heb. 9:15.
• 10“I will make an everlasting covenant with you” (Is. 55:3).
• 11Books containing the liturgical prayers for the Mass and the sacraments. Some are more than 1200 years old.
• 121 Tim. 3:9.
• 13Heb. 9:22.
• 14Lk. 24:26.
• 15Apoc. 13:8.
• 161 Tim. 4:10.
• 17Eph. 5:5.
• 18Mk. 13:26-27.
• 19Mt. 25:31-34, 41, 46.