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July 3, 1960
Cogitatio Sancta
(Holy
Meditation)
The Most Precious Blood
“For this is the Chalice of My Blood, of the
New and Eternal Covenant, the Mystery of Faith, which for you and for many
shall be shed unto the remission of sins”.
These words which the
priest uses at Mass to change the wine into the Blood of Jesus Christ seem to
run on and on when compared to the formula of Consecration of the Host: “For this is My Body”. Since both of these formulas have come down
to us from the earliest times, they indicate how preoccupied the first
Christians were with the value of the Blood of Christ, shed for the remission
of our sins.
This should not surprise
us, for the first Christians were taken from among the Jewish people, a people
steeped in Old Testament lore. In their
long and glorious history the events stood out prominently. These events constituted them in a special
relationship with God; they made them a race apart, a privileged people. In both of them blood figured
prominently. One was the first
Passover; the other was the sealing of the Covenant on Mount Sinai.
At first Passover, the
Children of Israel took a yearling lamb, perfect in every respect, killed it
and smeared some of its blood upon the doorposts of their homes. This rendered them immune to the last and
the greatest of all the plagues visited upon Egypt – the slaying of all the
first-born sons. It was at this time,
too, that they were liberated from bondage under the cruel yoke of
Pharaoh. Later on, at Mount Sinai,
after Moses had read to the people all the words of the Lord, they cried out
with one accord: Let us fulfill all that the
Lord has spoken. Then Moses wrote
down the words of the Lord in a book, and having offered victims of peace, he sprinkled
the book, the people and all the vessels of the Sanctuary with the blood of the
victim, saying: This is the blood of the
Covenant which the Lord has made with you concerning all those words. Henceforth the words of the contract – for
that is what a covenant is – would be binding upon both God and the Children of
Israel. If they would keep His
commandments, He would be their God, and they would be His people. He would bless those who blessed; He would
afflict all who afflicted Israel.
Provided they fulfilled their part of the bargain, the benign Providence
of God would see to it that the Sons of Jacob would grow into a strong numerous
people. They would gain the ascendancy
over the pagan tribes, their neighbors, and dominate them. Theirs would be a land flowing with milk and
honey. The Promised Land was a kind of
earthly paradise they would inhabit.
The terms of the Covenant
bound the Israelites so closely to God that their union was likened to the
union existing between a man and his spouse.
Later on, the Prophets denounced their violations of the contract as so
many ‘fornications’. That is how much
God was offended by their infidelities.
Now, what the blood of
animals used thus did for the Jews according to the flesh, symbolically, the Blood
of Jesus did for all of mankind according to the spirit, in Truth. When the merit of the Blood of Christ is
applied to a soul at Baptism, it leaves its mark upon the soul, and preserves
it from the angel of death. At this
time also it is freed from the bonds of sin.
Up until the shedding of Christ’s Blood, sin abounded in the world. The souls of men and their faculties were
slaves of the body and its appetites.
But where sin abounded, grace has super abounded. Now it is possible for a soul to enjoy the
liberty of the sons of God. The soul
can cry out with St. Paul: O Death, where is your
victory? O Death, where is your sting?
The Old Agreement
(Covenant) made the Jewish people mere servants of God. The New and Eternal Covenant makes us His Sons. If God was so good to mere servants, and was
pleased by sacrifices that had no intrinsic worth, how much more goodness does
He not lavish upon His children who offer Him a worthy sacrifice, a clean
oblation, one whose merits are without limit?
To His mere servants God gave dominion over their neighbors. To His sons, God gives power over demons;
His sons shall judge angels. God fed
His mere servants with the finest fruits of the earth. His sons feast upon the Incarnate Word, in
whom are contained all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. To His mere
servants God gave a material kingdom; to His sons He gives Himself – He is the
true country of the soul. The mere
servants of God inhabited an earthly paradise; His sons have the true Heaven,
the Most Holy Trinity, dwelling within their souls.
The words of Consecration
of the wine, quoted above, tell us that the Blood of Christ is the mystery of
Faith. The definite article is used
advisedly. It is the Mystery
because it is the compendium of all mysteries.
It is human blood: it speaks of
the Incarnation. It is blood that is
shed for us; it speaks of the redemption.
It is the Blood of the Covenant:
it speaks of our dignity as Sons of God, hence, of Sanctifying Grace and
the Indwelling of the Trinity.
Finally, because it is a mystery
of Faith, we profit by the Blood of Christ only through Faith. Every bilateral contract does not bind until
the contracting parties together give it binding power by a free act of the
will, an act externally manifested. Our
Lord Jesus Christ willed to bind Himself to the contract by shedding His Blood,
for He had power to lay down His life, or not to lay it down. We manifest our will to enter into the contract
by actually living according to its terms, that is, by living up to the truths
left to us by Jesus in the Gospel. Faith without works, after
all, is dead. Besides, Faith is not
vivified but by Charity. Charity resides
in the will.
We ought not to neglect
making use of the Precious Blood of Jesus to save souls. Every day we ought to offer it on behalf of
sinners. Like the Little Flower (St.
Therese) we might very well take up our
place in spirit beneath the cross of Jesus, and there gather up every drop of
Jesus’ blood, as if it were a precious balm, and apply to souls throughout the
world. To do so is eminently in accord
with our Carmelite Vocation.
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