How are we to apply to our souls the Blood of Christ so that we may be free from temporal punishment as well as from guilt? (1) We must offer up our sufferings in union with those of the Son of God, and bear them with meekness and resignation for His sake. (2) We must make frequent acts of the love of God and seek to bear Him in continual remembrance. (3) We must perform some determinate penances for determinate sins; both for sins in the past, and tendencies to sin in the present. (4) We must give alms if we can. (5) We must try to extinguish our own sins by saving others from sin. To prevent one mortal sin is to extinguish a virtual hell.

             July 19th

The Precious Blood A Lesson of Patience


If we watch the Son of God during those scenes in His Sacred Passion in which He shed His Blood for us, we notice, in one and all. His exceeding and incomparable patience. During the Agony in the Garden it was the sight of the brutal ingratitude of man that caused the sweat of blood to flow from His sacred limbs. How could He endure to suffer for such wretches? Yet meekly and patiently He endured their sacrileges, blasphemies, impurities, wanton hatred of God, which rose up before Him as He knelt there in Gethsemane.

At the Pillar again, what Divine patience! Not a look of anger, not a word of reproach. There He stands, the picture of uncomplaining endurance. What a lesson for me! How ready I am to complain, even when I receive some fancied slight or some trifling injury. How different am I from the Son of God! What a contrast is my conduct to His. O Jesus! teach me to endure without complaint my sufferings which are small indeed when compared with Thine!

See Him once more upon the Cross! Listen to the gibes and sneers cast at Him by the priests, their taunts of His inability to save Himself, Messiah though He was. How all this must have aggravated His physical agony! Yet His constant prayer was, "Father, forgive them!" O Jesus, grant me more of the patience and meekness Thou didst show while Thy Precious Blood was ebbing forth on the altar of the Cross!

July 23rd

The Third Shedding of the Precious Blood


When Pilate found that he could not persuade the Jєωs to consent to the release of Jesus, he ordered Him to be scourged, hoping that they might be satisfied with something short of His Death, and that their rage might be softened at the sight of a punishment so cruel. The scourging was for this reason severe beyond what was usual, as the Pharisees are said to have bribed the exe- cutioners and plied them with drink to induce them to still greater barbarity. See how all seemed to unite to add to the tortures inflicted on the Son of God.

Watch the scene. The Son of God with His hands tied to a short pillar; on either side of Him an executioner with a scourge of many lashes, some tipped with barbed spikes of iron, lashing Him with brutal ferocity. His Sacred Body first covered with bruises and weals, and then the flesh cut open and the Precious Blood trickling, then flowing down from the open wounds. Still they go on striking; the wounds and sores and bleeding flesh with unrelenting violence, the barbs tearing off small pieces of flesh until the ground is covered not only with a pool of blood, but also with these pieces of His Sacred Flesh. O Jesus! what didst Thou not suffer for me!

Hear Him moaning gently in His agony, and, amidst the moans, praying to the Eternal Father to accept each blow in expiation for the sins of men, and especially for the sinful indulgence of the flesh. O Jesus, may the thought of Thy scourging keep me from ever yielding to temptation. May I mortify my body for love of Thee.

        July 25th

The Fifth Shedding of the Precious Blood


On the summit of Calvary, stretched upon the rough Cross, with His arms extended along the cross-pieces which are to form the horizontal part of it, lies the Son of God, already wounded, covered with blood, exhausted by suffering and by His repeated falls upon the way. Surely the executioners will be satisfied with the ordinary method of tying His arms to the Cross, and leaving Him thus to die. No; for the innocent, spotless Lamb of God, new tortures are in store. Huge nails are placed in the centre of His Hands, and, with cruel strokes of a heavy mallet, driven through His delicate, sensitive palms. The blows are struck; the Precious Blood gushes forth, and Jesus moans under the exquisite pain which thrills through every nerve.

O Jesus! How can we bear to see Thee thus wounded! Those Hands were ever stretched forth to do good to all, to heal sorrows, and cure diseases. They never did aught but good. How then can cruel men be so ungrateful, so barbarous, so impious as to requite Thee thus? O, may I learn to sorrow with Thy anguish, and, like Thy most Holy Mother, to join my compassion to Thy Passion.

Yet sad and strange to say my actions correspond but ill to the expressions of my sorrow. It is for the sins committed by my stretched-out hands that Thou are suffering; for my selfishness, unkindness, immodesty, anger, covetousness. How shall I compensate Thee for my share in this cruelty? O, show me how, and help me to do so.

       July 27th

The Seventh Shedding of the Precious Blood


Even when the work of redemption was consummated, and Jesus had breathed forth His Soul into His Father's hands, He shed once more His Precious Blood for man. It was to mark the completeness of His Sacrifice that He thus poured forth, as it were, the last drop that still lingered in His Sacred Heart. It was a sign that He kept nothing in reserve. He proved His inexhaustible love to man by this last act, wherein which He bequeathed to man the last trace of life that still remained. O undying, unwavering love of Jesus, that loved us with an extremity of love unto the very end.

The water and the blood that issued from our Lord's side were the symbols of the two chief sacraments: the water, of Holy Baptism, and the blood, of the Blessed Eucharist. Thus it was that Christ is said, by this piercing of His side, to have laid the foundations of the Church; and as Eve, the spouse of Adam, was formed from the side of Adam, so the Church, the sacred Spouse of Christ, was formed from His side when the spear of the centurion pierced it. Pray for an intense love of Holy Church, on account of the love that Christ bears to His own true spouse.

The centurion little knew the meaning and import of his act when he pierced the side of Jesus. Tradition describes him as having some affection of the eyes, and the blood sprinkled upon him cured his sight in a moment. At the same time grace touched his heart, and he was converted. O wondrous power of the Sacred Blood of Christ!