Feast of the Precious Blood of Jesus
Epistle Hebrews 9: 11-15; Gospel John 19: 30-35
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost – July 1, 2012
Epistle 1 Peter 3: 8-15; Gospel Matthew 5: 20-24
St. Peter tells us that we “were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ.” (1 Peter 1:18) We can tell how much Peter loved Jesus by his use of the word “precious,” and Peter knew the meaning of the word precious: something of great value to us. Many in the world never heard that He redeemed us with His Blood, and many who have heard, reject it. But, like Peter, the Blood of Christ is precious to us.
At the Last Supper Jesus, Who is God, took the chalice and “gave thanks: and gave to them, saying: Drink ye all of this. For this is my blood of the new testament which shall be shed for many, for the remission of sins.” (Matthew 26: 28) After consecrating the bread He said, “Do this for the commemoration of me.” We know then that the bread becomes His Body and the wine becomes His Blood because God told us it does. And St. Paul tells us, “For as often as you shall eat this bread, and drink the chalice, you shall show the death of the Lord until he come.” (1 Corinthians 11: 24, 26)
The Mass then is the unbloody recreation of the Sacrifice of Calvary. The Sacrament of the Eucharist is a necessary part of the Mass, and the two are inseparable. “The sacrament is produced only in and through the Mass, the real difference between them is . . . that the sacrament is intended privately for the sanctification of the soul, whereas the sacrifice [the Mass] serves primarily to glorify God by adoration, thanksgiving, prayer, and expiation.” (Catholic Encyclopedia 1911, Sacrifice of the Mass)
St. John tells us Christ’s words: (John 6: 47-70) “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world. . . Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day.”
St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, [5,2,2] 180 A.D. wrote of this: “If the body be not saved, then in fact, neither did the Lord redeem us with His Blood; and neither is the cup of the Eucharist the partaking of His Blood nor is the Bread which we break the partaking of His Body . . . He has declared the cup, [which is] a part of creation, to be His own Blood . . . and the bread, [also] a part of creation, He has established as His own Body.” And St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogic Catechesis 4,1, c. 350 A.D. wrote: “ He once turned water into wine, in Cana of Galilee, at His own will, [so why] is it incredible that He should have turned wine into [His] blood? That wonderful work He miraculously wrought, when called to an earthly marriage; [but would] He not much rather be acknowledged to have bestowed the fruition of His Body and Blood on [His] children?”
In today’s Gospel we read of the opening of Christ’s side with a spear “and immediately there came out blood and water.” St. John tells us that Jesus foreshadowed this almost a year before Holy Thursday, the night He instituted the Sacrament of the Eucharist. (John 6: 25-71) This is a lengthy passage, but a careful reading will show that Jesus did not mean we are to eat His carnal flesh. He said to them, “Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.” They murmured among themselves about this, then He added, “Doth this scandalize you? If then you shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken to you, are spirit and life.” The doubters supposed they were to eat His dead flesh after He died. Christ by mentioning his ascension confirmed the truth that He stated that they had to eat of His flesh in order to have eternal life, and at the same time corrected their gross misunderstanding of eating his dead flesh, and drinking his blood, in a vulgar and carnal manner, by letting them know he would take his whole body living with him to heaven, that it was not supposed to be divided, mangled, and eaten on earth. We don’t receive the dead Christ. We receive the living flesh and blood of Christ in the Eucharist under the appearance of bread and wine, and He gives us life.
St. Augustine addressed this in Sermon 272: ”What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the Body of Christ and the chalice is the Blood of Christ. … How is the bread His Body? And the chalice, or what is in the chalice, how is it His Blood? Those elements, brethren, are called Sacraments, because in them one thing is seen, but another is understood. What is seen is the corporeal species, but what is understood is the spiritual fruit.” What we see is the bread and wine but what we understand is the Body and Blood of Christ. Clearly not a physical presence but a spiritual one. “’You, however, are the Body of Christ and His members.” You receive the host as the priest says, “May the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve your soul unto life everlasting.” You answer, “Amen,” and by answering you subscribe to this truth. So be a knowledgeable and obedient member of Christ’ s Body, so that your `Amen’ may be the truth.
At the end of Christ’s discourse at John 6: 25-71, “many of his disciples went back; and walked no more with him. Then Jesus said to the twelve: Will you also go away? And Simon Peter answered him: Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we have believed and have known, that thou art the Christ, the Son of God.” +++
“In the Garden of Eden, there's a tree that brings about death -- the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:16-17) -- and a tree which brings about eternal life -- the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:22). [This] shows us both that damnation can come about through something as simple as disobedient eating (that is, after all, what produced the Fall of Man), and that eternal life can come through eating the Fruit of the Tree of Life. When 1 Peter 2:24 and Galatians 3:13 describe Christ's Redemption as coming through the "Tree" of the Cross, they're making an allusion to Eden. Christ is the Fruit of Mary's Womb (Luke 1:42), the prophesied Seed of the Woman (Genesis 3:15). When we eat the Eucharist, we are partaking of the Fruit from the Tree of Life, which God has promised us would provide eternal life.
The idea that eating a certain spiritual food like the Eucharist would do anything seems odd to some. But in light of Eden, that sin entered the world through eating, it's not so strange at all that it should exit [the world in] the same way. (Catholic Defense blogspot)”
We Celebrate the Traditional Tridentine Latin Mass: The Mass of The Ages
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