The month of July is traditionally devoted to the Most Precious Blood of Jesus.
And as we kneel before the Blessed Sacrament exposed in the
monstrance, let us remember that we adore both the Lord’s Body and His Blood,
for the Blessed Sacrament contains the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus
Christ. Devotion to the Holy Eucharist is devotion to the Blood of Christ.
One of the oldest Christian documents, outside of sacred
scripture, from the first century of the Christian era, by Pope St. Clement I,
dated about 96 A.D. says: “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.”
The blood of Christ is truly worthy of our adoration, for
St. Peter says, “You were not redeemed with corruptible things, as gold or
silver… but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb unspotted and
undefiled.”
In 1960, Pope St. John XXIII wrote an apostolic letter on
devotion to the Precious blood. He writes: “Unlimited is the effectiveness of
the God- Man’s Blood - just as unlimited as the love that impelled him to pour
it out for us, first at his circumcision eight days after birth, and more
profusely later on in his agony in the garden, in his scourging and crowning
with thorns, in his climb to Calvary and crucifixion, and finally from out of
that great wide wound in his side which symbolizes the divine Blood cascading
down into all the Church’s sacraments. Such surpassing love suggests, nay
demands, that everyone reborn in the torrents of that Blood adore it with
grateful love… God wants all men to be saved, for he has willed that they
should all be ransomed by the Blood of his only-begotten Son; he calls them all
to be members of the one Mystical Body whose head is Christ. If only men would
be more responsive to these promptings of his grace, how much the bonds of
brotherly love among individuals and peoples and nations would be
strengthened.”
We gather here this evening, prompted by God’s grace to
adore the Lord’s Body and Blood. May what we do here this evening strengthen
those bonds of love among Christians and work toward the conversion of many to
belief in Christ whose blood was poured out for sinners, for the glory of God
and salvation of souls.
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