I’ve known a time when my blood pressure ‘shot
through the roof;’ another time when I was in dire need of eight pints of
blood. There was about these moments a ‘life or death’ urgency.’ The Book of
Leviticus (17.11) tells us, ‘The life of the
creature is in the blood.’
Since all of us human beings are made ‘in the
image and likeness of God’ it must be that
each of us is more precious than gold.
To take our own lives or the lives of other people is an abuse of God’s
precious gift. Suicide and murder can never be acceptable to God.
Therefore, the closest we can come to expressing
our recognition of God the Creator’s sovereignty over all life is to offer Him
the life, the blood, of an unblemished animal – lamb, goat, calf. This is what God wanted in Old Testament times.
This
slaughtering in obedience to God took the form of a public act of worship, a
sacrifice, a ‘sacred activity,’ by the slaughtering of the animal with the
shedding of its blood on the altar. Such liturgy was most persuasive to God
when His People needed forgiveness for their sins or some exceptional blessing.
However, these sacrifices were only acceptable to God when offered by people of
integrity, those with pure hearts.
When the Son of God
became man, one of us, this was the most wonderful, the most beautiful divine
activity within creation. Every action of Jesus, the Son God, the Son of Man,
was divinely, infinitely empowered…loaded with infinite merciful love…more than
sufficient to make amends for the mountains of sins already committed and those
yet to be committed by the sum total of human beings ever to tread this earth.
God decided that the seriousness of our sins
against Him and the seriousness of His merciful love for us had to be expressed
to us openly, convincingly. Hence Jesus declared, ‘No one can have
greater love than to lay down his life for
his friends. You are my
friends, if you do what I command you,’ (Jn. 15.13).
On the surface if might well appear that Jesus was the helpless
victim of treacherous, scheming, powerful men. It is vital to our understanding
of Jesus shedding His blood for our
redemption that we have Jesus Himself stating, ‘No one takes my life from me; I lay
it down of my own free will, and as I have power to lay it down, so I have
power to take it up again; and this is the command I have received from my
Father,’ (Jn. 10.18).
As early as about 96
A.D, Pope St. Clement I wrote, ‘Let
us fix our gaze on the Blood of Christ and realize how truly precious It is,
seeing that it was poured out for our salvation and brought the grace of
conversion to the whole world.’
These
words should convince us that devotion to the Precious Blood of Jesus is
central to our Catholic Faith and Practice. In the Mass the Words of Consecration makes this clear, ‘This Is The
Chalice Of My Blood, The Blood Of The New And Eternal Covenant, Which Will Be Poured Out For You
And For Many For The Forgiveness Of Sins.’
In 1849, Pope Pius IX extended the
Feast of the Precious Blood to the whole Church, assigning to it the first
Sunday in July, changed by Pope St. Pius X in 1914 to July 1. Since the Second Vatican Council the
feast has been merged with that of Corpus Christi, so that the new Feast is the
Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ.
All the same I recommend to you and to
myself that during the month of July we draw upon the rich devotional prayers
in honour of the Precious Blood of Jesus. Why not give some serious reflection
on the hymn that asks the question, ‘Are you washed blood of the Lamb?’
Peter Clarke,
OP
,
No comments:
Post a Comment