JULY is Dedicated

to the PRECIOUS BLOOD of JESUS

 

   "Let us fix our gaze on the Blood of Christ and realize how truly precious It is, seeing that it was poured out for our salvation and brought the grace of conversion to the whole world."  

~ Pope Saint Clement I, 96 A.D.

 

   The Church reminds us of the first drops of blood that flowed for our redemption on the day when Jesus was circumcised. It is night on Mount Olivet, and the moon is shining. We see the holy face crimsoned with blood during the agony in the garden. Unhappy, despairing Judas casts the blood-money down in the temple. "I have betrayed innocent blood!" In the scourging chamber we see the Lord in deepest humiliation; under raw strokes the divine Blood spurts out over the floor. Christ is led before Pilate. Pilate shows the blood-covered Body to the crowds: Ecce homo! We go through Jerusalem's streets following the bloody footsteps to Golgotha. Down the beams of the Cross blood trickles. A soldier opens the sacred side. Water and Blood.

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   The month of July is dedicated to the Precious Blood. The feast of the Precious Blood of our Lord was instituted in 1849 by Pius IX, but the devotion is as old as Christianity. The early Fathers say that the Church was born from the pierced side of Christ, and that the sacraments were brought forth through His Blood.

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   "The Precious Blood which we worship is the Blood which the Savior shed for us on Calvary and reassumed at His glorious Resurrection; it is the Blood which courses through the veins of His risen, glorified, living body at the right hand of God the Father in heaven; it is the Blood made present on our altars by the words of Consecration; it is the Blood which merited sanctifying grace for us and through it washes and beautifies our soul and inaugurates the beginning of eternal life in it."

~ 'The Church’s Year of Grace', by Fr. Pius Parsch

   

   As we seek to deepen our love for God through devotion to His Most Holy Eucharist as a Church, let us dedicate ourselves in this month of July to contemplating the Precious Blood of Jesus, which was poured out for the eternal freedom and life of all nations on earth, that all may know, in the fullness of time, true and everlasting peace!

 

O Blood and Water, which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fount of mercy for us, I trust in Thee!

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Oremvs Pro Invicem!

Father Albert Beltz, KHS, Pastor​​