The Precious Blood
Excerpt from the book The Eucharistic Christ
We continue our July devotion to the Precious Blood of Jesus through this beautiful prayer and meditation on the power of our Lord’s Most Precious Blood which was shed for each of us in reparation for our sins, which we receive in the Blessed Sacrament, and which continual is offered for our redemption.
Yours in Jesus and Mary.
From the book The Eucharistic Christ: Reflections and Considerations on the Blessed Sacrament by Reverend Father A. Tesniere (Benzinger Brothers, 1897, pages 100-110).
The Precious Blood
“This is My Blood . . .” Matthew 26:28, Mark 14:24
I. Adoration
I believe with my whole heart and with the Catholic Church that the whole of Thy blood, O Jesus, my Savior and my God, is contained and is present in the Most Holy Sacrament—present in Thy body hidden beneath the species, as in Thy body seated upon the heavenly throne; I believe that it is present and animated, living and glorified, circulating along Thy veins; real blood, human and divine together, human through its nature, divine through its union with the person of the Word.
I adore it as the blood of my God; I believe that each drop of it is united to the Word, immediately, without possible separation, and really deified by means of this marvelous contact and this ineffable assumption. I adore it and I contemplate it with the ecstasy springing from my faith in its splendor and in its beauty; it is a most pure blood, most ruddy, luminous, incorruptible, penetrated with the immutable and glorious life of the resurrection. I adore and I love it with the joy of my heart, for it is really human blood and of the same nature as mine; it is the blood taken from Mary, which flowed from her heart, which was fed and augmented by her milk, and which by means of a marvelous privilege of the love of the Son for His Mother always preserves the original perfume of its immaculate source.
I adore and revere it with holy fear, for it is the blood of the immaculate Lamb, slain for my sins; it escaped from the veins of the Christ with immense suffering, and it covered the dust and the rocks of the grotto of the agony; it tinged the lashes of the flagellation and the thorns of the crown; it left its trace upon the pavement of the praetorium and on the streets of Jerusalem, upon the nails and upon the wood of the cross, upon the veil of Mary and upon the robes of Magdalen; the sacrament contains the whole blood shed for the love of man and for the expiation of his crimes.
I adore it in the triple state which it puts on in the Eucharist; I believe that it is present in its totality in the host of the Tabernacle, therein animating the perpetual life of Jesus and making His five adorable wounds resplendent. I believe that it was shed under the distinct appearance of the wine at the sacrifice, thus reproducing the final act which separated it from the body of the Christ and inflicted death on the Savior; but at the same time I believe it to be present under the one and the other appearance, inseparably united with the flesh of the Savior and with His divinity.
I believe, lastly, that it gives itself really and in its totality in the communion; I believe that it remains in the communicant in order to vivify, refresh, and render fruitful his supernatural life as long as the holy species last. Everywhere it is the veritable blood, most holy, most precious, most divine, of the Son of Mary and of the Son of God, the blood of the risen and glorified Savior. To it be given adoration, praise, honor, and benediction!
II. Act of Thanksgiving
Give thanks, be filled with admiring gratitude in presence of the bounties and the beneficent efficacies of the precious blood: all the effusions of these prodigalities are for us; for us also and for our salvation all the marvelous effects of these all-powerful efficacies. Its prodigalities: it flowed at the very cradle beneath the knife of the circumcision, it was the impatient jet from a source which was about to overflow. It did indeed overflow during the passion—what channels were filled with its impetuous floods!
Blood from His face and from His whole body under the wine-press of the agony at Gethsemane; blood from His forehead under the thorns of the crown; blood from His shoulders beneath the leaded lashes of His flagellation; blood from His hands and His feet beneath the point of the nails which fastened Him to the cross; blood from His heart, exhausted to its last drop under the sword of the lance. And all this blood shed successively in so many ways till its complete exhaustion, it sheds itself entirely, mystically, and at one sole stroke in each one of the consecrated Hosts which cover the surface of the earth!
In all the chalices, every morning, at every hour of the day, in all the portions of the globe, it sheds itself anew; it delivers itself up, it offers itself to the Father for me!
In my breast it sheds itself everyday with all its plenitude, without cooling, without diminution or reserve; and it is there in me, mine, for me! And we are a thousand, a hundred thousand, who communicate everyday; and it multiplies its effusions that it may give itself to all; in spite of that each one does not receive it the less fully, and all drink of the same chalice and slake their thirst and exhaust it down to its last drop.
And of this blood, so lavishly shed, each atom is worth more than a world, and each smallest drop is capable of saving all mankind, of emptying purgatory, and of forming the happiness of heaven throughout all eternity. Ah! how can we sufficiently bless the royal, the divine bounties of the Precious Blood? And its marvelous efficacies, how can we describe them? How can we praise them sufficiently?
It purifies; it is it which has washed the world from its crimes, and which purifies souls every day through flowing in them by all the sacraments, above all, by that of the Eucharist, for it is the wine of virginity. It fortifies; it is a generous wine, a wine which revives, an elixir of life; it brightens the faculties of the soul, sharpens the intelligence, strengthens the memory, warms the heart, and fills it with enthusiasm, ardor, generosity. It gives joy; it inebriates, it dilates the heart, chases away sorrow, dissipates somber thoughts, and enlivens in discouragement, relieves despair —dedit et tristibus sanguinis poculum (and he gave to the sad a cup of blood)!
It cures; it cicatrizes1 the wounds of sin, repairs the ravages caused by long-standing habits; it is an all-powerful balm for all the wounds of the soul. It is the milk of infants as well as the wine of the strong; it charms, it consoles, it is full of suavity and of delights. It is the pure and wholesome water, fresh and limpid, after which the thirsty stag and the weary traveler sigh; it appeases the fever of the blood, tempers the force of the passions, of anger, of voluptuousness, of covetousness; the soul drinks of it, bathes and plunges into it, and in it renews his life.
Jesus, who hast deposited in the vivifying liquor of Thy precious blood all virtues, all savors, all balms, all inebriations and all charms, ah, be Thou blessed, thanked, glorified forever for this inexpressible gift! To Thy blood I owe my baptism; to Thy blood my First Communion and my daily communion, and the absolution which raises me up every time that I fall, and all these graces which forestall me, excite me, sustain me, enlightening my intelligence, strengthening my will; all the sap of my supernatural life, with the warm emanations which render it fruitful, the dews which refresh it, the succor which defends it, all comes to me from Thy adorable blood, shed once upon Calvary, shed everyday mystically on the altar!
To Thy blood I owe my heaven, and the sight of Thee, and Thy possession, and glory, and endless happiness! Ah! what shall I render to Thy blood for so many benefits? I will drink it and all the days of my life from the eucharistic chalice until I can drink it without interruption in the golden chalice of the eternal banquet!
III. Propitiation
The effusions of Thy blood, O Jesus, my Savior, so salutary and so beneficent for me, have always been for Thee, sweet Lamb, either full of suffering or full of humiliation—suffering during Thy life, humiliation in Thy Eucharist. If Thy blood flows beneath the iron of the circumcision, it is attended with painful suffering for Thy tender flesh of a little child. If it flows upon Gethsemane, in cold drops which soon form into rivulets on Thy body and on the ground where Thou dost agonize, it is the wine-press of anguish, of terror, of a mortal heaviness, which crushes Thee and makes it flow forth from Thy veins. In the praetorium it is the tearing open by more than three thousand blows of leaded lashes which rip up Thy body and discover Thy naked bones; but with what sufferings! And when the thorns go in search of it in Thy forehead and in all Thy adorable head, by piercing it through and through, what tortures endured in that center of human sensitiveness!
And when Thy knees were opened by striking the stones in the road against which Thou wert heavily cast by the weight of Thy cross, and the brutality of the soldiers and Thy own exhaustion! And when the nails pierced Thy hands and Thy feet, tearing the tissues, wrenching asunder the muscles and breaking the bones—what sufferings, what cruel tortures, what an assemblage of all kinds of suffering, of all kinds of torments! And yet it was far less the cruelty of Thy executioners which made Thy adorable blood flow than Thy love, which impelled it to pour itself out, carried away as Thou wert by Thy tenderness, Thy devotion towards us!
And now Thou dost still shed it mystically in the Eucharist. It is without suffering, but not without humiliation; it cannot be but that it must always cost Thee much to shed it and that its effusions must always be the effort of a love that is heroic and forgetful of itself even to immolation. It is humiliated by the annihilations of the eucharistic state, while in Thy glorious body in heaven it appears full of heat, of movement, and of life, coloring Thy cheeks, making Thy veins pulsate, manifesting itself by the thrilling joys of Thy heart, here it is veiled, reduced, silent, without appearance, destitute of life, incapable of affirming and of manifesting itself, it is deprived, moreover, of the essential quality of the blood which constitutes its value and its glory—that is to say, of vivifying human limbs and rendering them vigorous, active, alert, and resplendent with health.
And, still more, on account of this annihilated state humiliation joins itself to humiliation to make it disowned and totally forgotten. How many of those who have a knowledge of the Eucharist think of therein adoring Thy precious blood, O Jesus, and of giving to it the worship of honor, of gratitude, and of love which it merits by so many titles? How many are distinctly aware of its presence, of its nature, its action, and its glorious qualities? And yet this precious blood is present in the sacred Host, and gives to it its salutary efficacies!
What must be said of all those who, having deserted the path leading to the holy table, and having entirely forsaken the Eucharist, no longer render to Thy blood the worship which their Christian title and Thy rights as the Savior make it an absolute duty for them to render? It is a fresh humiliation for this generous blood to be shed so often in our souls and so abundantly without succeeding in shaking off their apathy, in warming their coldness—in a word, without being able to make them live a supernatural life, active and generous, it is the humiliation of sterility for the most active principle of life!
It is a humiliation which goes as far as insult, outrage, and ignominy, the humiliation to which Thy precious blood is subjected when it is received into sacrilegious hearts, when it comes in contact with their impure blood, in which ferment all kinds of corruption.
Alas, I have greatly abused Thy blood, O Jesus, who dost shed it at the price of so many sufferings and humiliations! I have abused it and neglected it; I have not profited by it, and I have nullified its power; each one of my sins was an outrage committed against Thy adorable blood, a stain which I imprinted upon it, an ignominy which I imposed on it; and if I have communicated unworthily one single time I have rendered myself “guilty of the blood of the Lord,” (1 Corinthians 11:27) according to what Saint Paul asserts!
I desire henceforth to make reparation by fleeing from sin, by the faithful and frequent reception of the communion, I desire to know and to honor Thy blood, to lend myself by means of a generous cooperation to the sanctifying work which it comes to perform in me. But there is still a very serious crime which is committed against the eucharistic blood of Jesus, and a very profound humiliation which springs from it; it is the adulteration of the wine destined for the holy sacrifice. Wine is especially the matter of the blood, it is immediately consecrated and changed into the blood of Christ, it is therefore a direct injury inflicted upon it when from avarice, interested calculations, or any other motive, an inferior wine, mixed or adulterated, is offered for the consecrating action.
And in this age of a mercantile spirit carried to excess, where the public conscience is subjected to such profound attacks, how often is this crime not committed? Every soul which understands the price of the blood of Jesus will desire to make reparation for such a crime in so far as is possible to do so. As priests we will exercise the greatest care in the choice of the wine for the holy sacrifice; we shall desire that it should be always better and purer than what is used at our table; as simple laymen we will concur in this reparation by furnishing our priests, in proportion to our means, with an exceedingly pure wine, the fruit of our economy and of the sacrifices which we impose on ourselves to offer to the Lord this oblation of so agreeable an odor!
IV. Supplications
“We pray Thee, O Lord, come to the help of Thy servants whom Thou hast redeemed by Thy precious blood: Te ergo quaesumus, tuis famulis subveni, quos pretioso sanguine redemisti.”
Let us pray, therefore, by the precious blood of Jesus— the blood of Jesus is a voice of mercy and pardon— melius loquentis quam Abel (a better speaker than Abel); it is the voice of the Pontiff and of the Supreme Mediator; a powerful voice, since it is the blood of the very Son of God; a voice which is not silent, for its wounds represent it always before the eyes of the Father; a voice which everyday, at every moment of the day, utters aloud, when immolating itself at the Holy Sacrifice, a most solemn prayer, the prayer of the whole Christian people; a voice which comes from the heart of each man who receives the communion, and who can then present to God the blood of Jesus as being His own blood.
Ah, what a concert of prayer, perpetual, universal, ardent, humble, and sacrificed, issues from all the consecrated Hosts in each one of which the blood of Jesus prays, supplicates, intercedes, with all the love and the ardor of which it is capable!
Let us pray through the blood of Jesus; it is a ransom, and the price of all the virtues which we have to obtain. It has paid everything in advance and super-abundantly; graces of conversion, of reformation, of light, of deliverance, graces to persevere and to advance, graces for life and graces for death; heaven itself and eternal glory, the precious blood of Jesus has acquired, gained, and paid for all this for us; and it is of a value infinitely superior to it all. Let us, then, offer and pay with this blood, for it is ours; its purity, its generosity, its intrinsic value, its sufferings, its humiliations—it places all, in our hands; let us, then, make use of it with confidence!
Of ourselves we are nothing; with the blood of Jesus, everything!
Yes, we can, and we ought to offer the precious blood of Jesus enclosed in all the Hosts throughout the world, and, still more, the precious blood which animates the Hosts of our communions in order to glorify the Holy Trinity, rejoice heaven, the angels and the saints, to make the heart of Mary thrill with ever-renewed gladness; to succor purgatory, and to shed within it a clearer daylight of hope, and to deliver its dear prisoners; for the conversion of infidels over all the earth, for all the needs of the Holy Church, for all sinners; it is our right, our duty also, and under the penalty of burying the magnificent and inexhaustible talent which is confided to us we ought to accomplish it with the utmost fidelity and with the utmost confidence.
Let us pray, then; let us intercede, let us pay through the blood of Jesus; it is the blood of victory, of redemption, of resurrection, and of life eternal!
Verb: to heal by inducing the formation of a cicatrix (scar). — Dictionary.com