A gift of inestimable worth: A reflection on the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ

The following is a message from Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron to the faithful of the Archdiocese of Detroit:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Recently I had reason to remember that in the last year of my time as Bishop of Oakland, I offered the faithful a meditation on the power of the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ. After reviewing it, I’ve decided to share my reflections with you for whatever help they might be in your prayerful observance of Holy Week, particularly as we advance together on the road of our Eucharistic Revival.

My meditation on the Precious Blood was greatly enriched by a scene from Mel Gibson’s movie, "The Passion of the Christ." If you’ve seen the film, you will recall that after Christ’s scourging, Our Lady is shown kneeling on the floor of the courtyard pavement, wiping up her Son’s blood with a cloth. While there is no warrant in any of the Gospels or other sources for the historical truth of this depiction, it has a sort of fittingness that helped to make this moment, at least for me, one of the most memorable in the film.

This image vividly captures the inestimable worth of Christ’s blood. I think it keeps coming back to me just now because of where we are in our progress through Lent to Easter. In the readings for Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours, there is an increasing mention of blood — of the shedding of Christ’s Precious Blood for us in his Passion and of how that outpouring of his blood saves us. These expressions of this truth of our faith come to their full flowering at the Paschal Vigil when the deacon, in the Exsultet, proclaims that we must rejoice because, “These, then, are the feasts of Passover, in which is slain the Lamb, the one true Lamb, whose Blood anoints the doorposts of believers.”

In the Office of Readings for Friday of the Third Week of Lent, we read in St. Gregory the Great’s meditation on Our Lord’s prayer for the forgiveness of his executioners, how this cry to his Father for mercy toward them is present in his blood. Since many of you might not have access to this text, I will share it with you here.

St. Gregory takes Job’s prayer, “Earth, do not cover over my blood, do not let my cry find a hiding place in you (Job 16:18),” as expressing Christ’s prayer for those who put him to death: “[This verse] speaks of Christ’s blood. Earth does not cover over the blood of our Redeemer, for every sinner, as he drinks the blood that is the price of his redemption, offers praise and thanksgiving, and to the best of his power makes that blood known to all around him. … The blood that is drunk, the blood of redemption is itself the cry of our Redeemer. [The Letter to the Hebrews] speaks of ‘the sprinkled blood that calls out more eloquently than Abel’s’ (12:24). Of Abel’s blood Scripture had written: ‘The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me from the earth’ (Gen. 4:10). The blood of Jesus calls out more eloquently than Abel’s, for the blood of Abel asked for the death of Cain the fratricide, while the blood of the Lord has asked for, and obtained, life for his persecutors.”

The Letter to the Hebrews provides St. Gregory with a reference that helps him to develop his point with great force. This is very understandable, since that Letter is, in some sense, an extended meditation on Jesus as the High Priest of the New Covenant. At his Ascension, He comes before the Father in the heavenly sanctuary with His own blood to obtain our salvation (see Heb. 9:1-14). Undoubtedly it is because of the eloquence with which the Letter to the Hebrews explains how the offering of Christ’s blood was the price of our redemption that this book of the New Testament is read continuously in the Office of Readings for the last two weeks of Lent, up until the Easter Vigil.

The whole of the New Testament, not just the Letter to the Hebrews, testifies to the infinite worth of the blood of Christ. According to all of the accounts of the institution of the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper, Jesus identifies his blood as poured out for the remission of sins, as the seal of the new and eternal covenant. Thus, it is the sacrifice of Atonement foretold by Isaiah in his prophecy of God’s Suffering Servant.

St. Paul, in his farewell to the Ephesians, reminds them that God the Father bought his Church “with the blood of his own Son” (Acts 20:28). St. Peter puts it this way: “You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Pet. 1:18-19). And St. John’s testimony to the outpouring of blood along with water from the open side of Christ dead on the cross is his affirmation of this mystery.

St. John XXIII, in his Apostolic Letter on the Most Precious Blood, summarizes the riches of the biblical teaching by speaking of Christ’s blood as “the price of our redemption, the pledge of salvation and life eternal.” This great pope reminds us that “unlimited is the effectiveness of [Christ’s] the God-Man’s Blood — just as unlimited as the love that impelled him to pour it out for us … in his agony in the garden, in his scourging and crowning with thorns, in his climb to Calvary and crucifixion, and finally from out that great wide wound in his side which symbolizes the divine Blood cascading down into the Church’s sacraments.” To reinforce his point, St. John quotes from St. John Chrysostom: “This Blood, poured out in abundance, has washed the whole world clean.”

In linking the unlimited effectiveness of Christ’s blood with the unlimited effectiveness of his love, St. John XXIII give us the key to understanding how it is that the shedding of the Lord’s blood accomplishes our redemption. In his Passion, he loved unconditionally and so he makes satisfaction for all the sinful acts of human history — from Adam until the end of time — in which we refuse God the whole-hearted love he deserves from us. Christ loves infinitely in the shedding of his blood, and that outpouring reconciles us with God and with each other.

St. John understands that insofar as Christians begin to comprehend the significance of the shedding of Christ’s blood for us, we cannot help but “cherish warmly that marvelous manifestation of divine mercy toward individuals and Holy Church and the whole world redeemed and saved by Jesus Christ.” In other words, to the degree we grasp the worth of Christ’s blood, we will grow in ardent devotion toward his blood. Such loving devotion is, then, a special fruit of our observance of Lent. As we recall what Jesus, as the Paschal Lamb of the New Covenant, did to save us, we respond with increased faith, and love, and trust in him. (I’ll say a bit more about this at the end of my reflection.)

One of the most beautiful expositions I’ve ever encountered about the power and worth of Christ’s blood was in a sermon of Dr. Billy Graham, which I heard on television many years ago. Dr. Graham concluded his preaching by calling on the congregation to comprehend the worth of the saving blood of Christ and to renew their faith in its power. To me his sermon, powerful as it was, was not complete. It was like one of those ancient statues that has come to us as only a torso without arms or legs or head. It was a fragment. Why? Because Christ invites us not only to have faith in his Precious Blood, but actually to receive his blood in the Holy Eucharist.

In the Blessed Sacrament, Christ gives us his body under the appearances of bread and his blood under the appearances of wine. His purpose in establishing this sacrament is to unite us with his saving sacrifice, to give us communion with his love. And each set of appearances is an awesome sign of the grace given to us through the sign. As St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us, receiving the whole Christ under these two different signs “serves to represent Christ’s Passion, in which the blood was separated from the body” (ST, III, 76, 2). Drinking Christ’s Precious Blood from the chalice is an almost incomprehensible grace: the presentation to us and the acceptance by us of the very blood by which we are saved.

It is my conviction that one of the best results to be looked for from our attentive meditation on the meaning and power of Christ’s Precious Blood, especially in these years of the Eucharistic Revival, will be a renewed reverence in our drinking Jesus’ blood in Holy Communion. In consuming what admittedly looks and tastes like wine, we come into contact with nothing other than the very blood which Christ in his love poured out in his agony in the garden, in his scourging and crowning with thorns, in his climb to Calvary and crucifixion, and finally from that great wide wound opened in his Sacred Heart when all “was finished.”

With this renewed appreciation for the incomparable gift of Christ’s Precious Blood offered to us in the chalice at Mass, let us approach it with wonder and awe. Let us walk from our pew, to the Host, and then to the chalice with hearts afire for the divine love we are about to consume. Let our simple gesture of reverence before the chalice be “supercharged” with all our love and adoration for Christ who shed this, his Precious Blood, for us and for those dear to us, even for our enemies and for the whole world. Let none of us refer to what is in the chalice as “wine.” No more casual references to “taking the wine,” or “drinking the wine” or “ministering the wine,” or “liking the taste of the wine.” It is not wine; it is blood, God’s blood.

Let all of us, especially us priests, deacons, and extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, unfailingly express our worship of that which we hold in the chalice as long as the Precious Blood remains present there. Let us observe carefully and fully the norms of the Missal’s “Instruction” about receiving and distributing the Precious Blood, not for the sake of the norms themselves (that would be only legalism), but with an attention and reverence that gives heartfelt expression to our loving worship. In this way we will call and inspire one another to be of one heart and mind in acts of adoration and gratitude. And, finally, let us give our whole soul to the grace of drinking Christ’s blood so that we will, in turn, pour ourselves out in love for God and neighbor.

I mentioned above that Holy Week is a most appropriate time to nurture our devotion to the Precious Blood of Christ. Meditating on the Scripture readings and the other liturgical texts is an excellent way to achieve this goal and take possession of this great grace. Another help I would mention is one praised by the letter of St. John XXIII quoted above: praying the “Litany of the Most Precious Blood.” To assist you in this regard, I am appending a copy to this reflection. You could copy it, place it in your prayer book, and make it part of your prayer.

May the Holy Spirit bless these final days of our Lent, and may you come to the Paschal Triduum new again in the life of Christ, the immortal life he won for us by the outpouring of his blood.

Sincerely Yours In Christ,

The Most Reverend Allen H. Vigneron
Archbishop of Detroit