Precious Blood Gems (January)
January 01, 2023
Jan 1 This feast coincides with the beginning of the civil year; the first drops of Jesus’ Blood seal and consecrate each new year, making it really the annus Domini, the year of Our Lord, which it actually is, since time belongs to God. Our life too is God’s; it has been redeemed and sanctified by the Blood of Christ. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene
Jan 2 The Lord was bound to taste of death for every person—to become a propitiation for the world and to justify all people by His own blood. St. Basil of Caesarea
Jan 3 This Blood is the salvation of our souls. Through it the soul is cleansed; through it, beautified; through it, inflamed. It makes our intellect grow brighter than fire. It renders our soul more radiant than gold. This Blood has been poured forth and has opened the way to heaven. St. John Chrysostom
Jan 4 Not a single grace was given you but was bought with the blood of Jesus, your compassionate Savior. Not one grace is given you but might, by your fidelity to it, become for you an eternal treasure. Not one grace is given you but you must give an account of it in your hour of death and judgment. St. Elizabeth Seton
Jan 5 Christ bent his steps to the garden of Gethsemane, there to pour forth his prayers, his tears, his blood; and the next day to die on the cross of Calvary. Oh! How profitably may we draw near and with all the powers of our soul attend and learn obedience from an Incarnate God who for our example is obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. St. John Nepomucene Neumann
Jan 6 God has set on Christ’s head the crowns of all those kings who form your kingdom, for yours is a kingdom of kings, resplendent in their regalia, each consecrated to you by the blood of Christ. Rupert of Deutz
Jan 7 O Lord, Master, and eternal Physician, you freely offer us your Blood as the cure for our souls, and although you paid for it with your Passion and death on the Cross, it costs me nothing, save only the willingness to receive it. St. Angela of Foligno
Jan 8 (Epiphany) If to Christ our Lord is given all power in heaven and on earth; if all people, purchased by his precious blood, are by a new right subjected to his dominion; if this power embraces all people, it must be clear that not one of our faculties is exempt from his empire. Pope Pius XI
Jan 9 (Baptism of the Lord) We are celebrating a second birth today. We have already celebrated the earthly birth of the Lord Jesus but what we celebrate today is our own birth. On Christmas Jesus is born but today Christianity is born. There are three things which make a Christian. The first is faith, the second is baptism and the third is sharing in the altar of the body and blood of Christ. Today we celebrate the beginning of our faith, the baptism which consecrated that beginning, and the wonders of the heavenly table which foreshadow the glory of Heaven. Our faith must not degenerate from its beginnings, the grace of baptism mustn’t be brought to nothing, and our
sharing in the Lord’s chalice mustn’t lead to judgment rather than glory. Bl. Guerric of Igny
Jan 10 Our Lord Jesus Christ made himself empty that he might wisely draw all things to himself. Therefore he let all the blood that was in his Body flow out, and so attracted to himself all the compassion and grace that was in his Father’s heart, so completely and profitably as to suffice for the whole world. Meister Eckhart
Jan 11 By means of his own blood, which was the same as ours, he brought us back, like captives who had been taken in war, and who shared the same flesh and blood as he did. St. Gregory of Nyssa
Jan 12 We have to flee to Christ’s blood. That means we have to imitate Christ’s passion by our way of life. It is by doing this that we are made able to share his bodily resurrection, but only after we have died with Him. St. Aelred of Rievaulx
Jan 13 By the Law [of Moses], sprinkling was a cleansing from sin; it purified the people through faith by the sprinkling of blood, of which blessed David speaks: You shall sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall be cleansed ; the Law, through faith, providing as a temporary substitute, in the blood of whole burnt-offerings, a type of the sprinkling with the blood of the Lord, which was to be. St. Hilary of Poitiers
Jan 14 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. St. Gregory the Great
Jan 15 Wonderfully made by God’s master hand! Sprinkled, sanctified, and glorified with the precious blood is the temple of our hearts in which the Holy Spirit is enthroned and rules. St. Arnold Janssen
Jan 16 Cruelty should not justify itself under the pretext of justice, nor should carelessness and sloth hide under the cloak of mercy. They should be marked with the sign of the Lord’s Passion, so that whatever we do virtuously, we should be wholly marked with the blood of the Lord’s cross. St. Anthony of Padua
Jan 17 Devotion to the Blood of Jesus Christ is the foundation of hope in divine mercy. St. Gaspar del Bufalo
Jan 18 O my beloved Spouse and loving Word, you engender the Body of the Holy Church in a way which You alone know and understand. ... By means of your Blood, You make a well-organized, well-formed Body of which you are the Head. The angels delight in its beauty, the archangels admire it, the seraphim are enraptured by it, all the angelic spirits marvel at it, and all the souls of the blessed in heaven rejoice in it. The Blessed Trinity takes delight in it in a manner beyond our comprehension ” (St. Mary Magdalen dei Pazzi).
Jan 19 O Christ, eternal Truth, what is your doctrine? And by what path do You direct us to the Father? I can find no other way but the one which you have marked out in virtue of the fire of your charity. The path, O eternal Word, which you have marked with your Blood is the way. St. Catherine of Siena
Jan 20 The one who does not love his neighbor, does not love you, my Lord; for in all the Blood you shed we see the exceedingly great love which you bear for the children of Adam. St. Teresa of Avila
Jan 21 I will confidently hide myself in the Wounds of my Lord Jesus Christ, and I will wash away the stains of all my iniquities in his precious Blood, and will evermore rejoice with holy desire in him my Creator and Redeemer. Louis de Blois
Jan 22 It is not only the voice of the blood of Abel, the first innocent man to be murdered, which cries to God, the source and defender of life. The blood of every other human being who has been killed since Abel is also a voice raised to the Lord. In an absolutely singular way, as the author of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, the voice of the blood of Christ, of whom Abel in his innocence is a prophetic figure, cries out to God: "You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God ... to the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel" (12:22, 24). Pope St. John Paul II
Jan 23 It is worthwhile to welcome every life because every man and woman is worth the blood of Christ himself (cf. 1 Pt 1:18-19). We cannot have contempt for what God has loved so much! Pope Francis
Jan 24 Through the sprinkling of the blood of Our Lord, made with the hyssop of the cross, we have been restored to a whiteness incomparably more excellent than that of the snow of innocence. St. Francis de Sales
Jan 25 In Christ we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. St. Paul the Apostle
Jan 26 The earth did not cover the blood of Christ, because Holy Church has already preached the mystery of his redemption in all parts of the world. . . . The very blood of redemption that is received is the cry of our Redeemer. . . . In order then that the sacrament of the Lord’s passion may not be unproductive in us, we must imitate what we receive, and preach to everyone else what we venerate. Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel
Jan 27 People buy for an easy price a thing for which they care little. Christ bought us with his heart’s blood, a dearer price there never was, that he might draw out of us our love toward him which cost him so dear. Ancren Rule
Jan 28 Of the glorious body telling, O my tongue, its myst’ries sing, and the blood, all price excelling, which the world’s eternal king, in a noble womb once dwelling, shed for this world’s ransoming. St. Thomas Aquinas
Jan 29 Christ gave his blood in place of all people, that the blood of animals might not be required of us; he entered the sanctuary which was not made by hands, and he became the priest and minister of the holy place. St. Aphraates of Persia
Jan 30 One single drop of blood from Jesus, the Man-God, would have been enough to save us, because everything in him has infinite value; but, among so many other reasons, he wanted his blood to be poured out to the last drop from the piercing of his Sacred Heart, to show us the extent of his love. Bl. Columba Marmion
Jan 31 There you have the secret of his heart, the strength and fervor of his charity: love for souls, a true love because it was a reflection of his love for our Lord Jesus Christ and because it was the souls themselves that he saw in the thought, heart and precious blood of our Lord; and so there was no sacrifice or enterprise that he would not undertake to win over those souls so intensely loved. Bl. Philip Rinaldi on St. John Bosco