The feast of the most precious blood

Our faith and our feasts are nothing if not bloody. In the Old Testament the blood of bulls was sprinkled on the people. We have the blood of the martyrs, the blood on the cross, the sacred heart torn open and are continually reminded of the cost for our salvation,

As we recently celebrated the nativity of St. John the Baptist and are in the octave of that feast, we are once again reminded of blood. Today is the octave day of the Octave of this great Saint, St. John the Baptist.

So why this feast? Was not good Friday enough? That was my question so I consulted Dom Prosper Gueranger's masterpiece the liturgical year volume XII.

Gueranger notes that the key to this days feast lies in the epistle reading from Hebrews (Hebrews 9) wherein we are told of the fact that this feast is not about blood of goats, or lambs but rather it is by HIS OWN blood, that the Son of God entered heaven. I think here of what St. Mary of Agreda said of the blood that was gathered by the angels after He shed His blood during the torture of the Passion. Every speck of blood was gathered by the Angels and treated with the most tender care. (Sometimes this thought depresses me when I see how casually the body and blood of Our Lord is treated in some parishes)

It is this Divine Blood that makes us participators of Christ.

The gradual of today's Mass, Gueranger reminds us speaks of the tremendous love of God

This is He that comes by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood.

There are three that give testimony in heaven:The Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that give testimony on earth; the spirit, the water, and the blood: and these three are one. Alleluia Alleluia

If we receive the testimony of men, the testimomy of God is greater.

Today's gospel recounts the crucifixion but this time, at this feast the opening of the side of our Lord by the soldiers lance is a cause not for sorrow but for joy. As Gueranger points out, at this moment we become flesh of His flesh and bone of His bone. In other words part of Him by means of his precious blood. As St John says : Let us then love God, since He hath first loved us.

So this feast, far from being gruesome and once again bringing us back to the suffering of Calvary, is in fact a feast of joy. We are invited to bathe in the waters of his blood, to drink in the blood and be cleansed and united to Him.

Many years ago while I was attending a Protestant Church, and singing in their excellent choir in Newfoundland, we invited a missionary named Dr. Paul Brand to speak in a series of talks. Dr. Brand was a leprosy surgeon in India and spoke about the blood of the lamb. He noted that blood cleanses, it cleans out disease, it washes away debris in the body. This was the reason I returned from my wanderings back to Christianity and entered a Presbyterian seminary, it was due to the blood. This was well over 30 years ago.

The Church, whilst presenting her gifts for the sacrifice, sings how that chalice, which she is offering to the benediction of her sons, the priests, becomes, by virtue of the sacred words, the inexaustible source, whence the Blood of her Lord flows out upon the whole world.

This is what this feast is all about. It expresses the inexahutible graces that flow through the precious blood of Christ, and urges us not to delay but to embrace his love, on this the octave day of St. John the Baptist.