One particularly challenging area is ministry to those who struggle with addiction. My eighth year of seminary, I was able to minister at an addiction treatment center primarily for adolescents with addiction, but I would also meet some parents who also had addiction problems.
And I can remember an adult woman I met in recovery who had been, what she called “a hopeless alcoholic.” She had been through a number of programs, and had attained sobriety for a while, but she would always end up getting drunk again. She told me how she reached where she really hit rock bottom. She had fallen-off-the-wagon and had gone on a drinking binge lasting several months in Chicago; she woke up one morning in an alley next to a dumpster, not remembering how she got there. And in utter desperation she had decided to take her life—she planned to jump in front of a train.
And on her way to take her own life, she passed by St. Peter’s Church, and for a reason she couldn’t quite explain she went into the Church and into the Confessional. And she told the Confessor Priest that she was in such desperation that she was going to kill herself. “Why do you want to end your life?” the priest asked her. She said, “because I am a hopeless drunk, I am a bum, I am an addict. I am good for nothing.” And she said that that priest answered with great vigor and said, “No you are not. You are a child of God and made in God’s image and likeness, bought back from evil, from darkness and death at the cost of His only begotten Son, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That’s who you are. You also happen to have a severe drinking problem. But maybe, if we begin to work on who you are as a Christian, the bad things that you do will begin to take care of themselves.” This woman, who I met, here in Cleveland, said that was the turning point in her life.
What that priest told her, was a restatement of what we just heard in our second reading. It is in Christ, through His blood, that we have been redeemed, and our sins forgiven. You have been chosen, destined by adoption, to be holy and blameless.”
This is a message that we must all take to heart: You and I, Christians, are sacred, because you and I have been purchased by the blood of the Son of God, bought back from evil, from darkness and death.
What does it mean that you are sacred? I can think of a story to illustrate: In Virginia a few years back, there was a squabble over a parcel of land. A group of developers had purchased a parcel of land and wanted to build on it a shopping center. But there was a problem, this piece of land was venerated as a Civil War Battlefield upon which was fought the great Battle of Manassas. Well, when these developers announced their plans to build a shopping mall, and a cry went up from the people who said, “your can’t do that. This ground, this earth is sacred, because the blood of brave soldiers had been spilled here.” That which is held sacred, we make every effort to protect from profanation.
Why do Catholics work to defend innocent life in the womb with such vigor? Because innocent life, too is sacred. Why do we work to protect and defend the institution of marriage, because marriage is sacred.
What St. Paul is saying, dear Christians is that you have become sacred ground: your minds, your wills, your bodies, your souls have been sanctified by the blood of Christ through baptism, and when you really believe that, you make effort to protect it from profanation.
What had made the blood of the Manassas battlefield sacred was the blood of the soldiers who died there. But, the Christian, has been covered, has been washed, with the Blood of the Innocent Lamb, the Incarnate God.The Lord Jesus shed his precious blood and gave his life to redeem us, to save us from hell, and has made us adopted sons and daughters of God. “It through His blood that we have been redeemed and our sins forgiven.”
Pope Leo the Great encouraged the Church to remember this often. He said, “Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God's own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God's kingdom.” Whenever you are tempted, whenever you begin to believe that you are a hopeless case, call to mind that you have been washed and sanctified by the blood of Christ.
There is an old southern Baptist hymn that goes “would you be free from your burden of sin? There’s power in the blood, would you over evil a victory win? There’s wonderful power in the blood. Would you be free from your passion and pride? There’s power in the blood. Come for a cleansing to Calvary’s tide. There’s power in the blood.”
The Month of July is traditionally dedicated to the Precious Blood of the Lord, and we do well to meditate frequently and thank God for the Precious Blood shed for us, the blood which has the power to redeem the gravest of sinners.
One such meditation is that beautiful litany, the Litany of the Precious Blood: listen:
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
The blood of Christ has the power to break the most powerful addiction…if you let it. It has the power to impel the most timid soul to be a prophet in the world, like Amaziah in our first reading…if you let it. The blood of Christ has the power to transform ordinary fishermen, like the Apostles, into Princes and Heralds of the Gospel…if you let it.. The blood of Christ has the power to make you and me into great instruments of God, even in this increasingly secular age, and holy and without blemish…if we let it.
As we continue this Eucharistic Sacrifice, offering again the sacrifice of the Son’s Blood to The Father, let us be renewed and nourished, strengthened, sanctified and saved by that same Precious Blood for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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