Precious Blood Gems (December)
December 24, 2023
December 1. I do not make any request for myself alone. I do not say ‘my Father’ but ‘our Father.’ I do not say ‘my bread but ‘our bread’. I ask for nothing for myself alone, rather I am careful to ask for all people, for us all, children of Our Lord, loved by him, all of us, whom he has redeemed by his blood. St. Charles De Foucauld
December 2. Christ has broken open our prison, and won the victory, and by His death slain our death; and He has redeemed us by His blood, and made us free through His living waters of baptism, and enriched us with His sacraments and with His gifts: that we might go out (as He says) with all the virtues, to meet Him in the house of glory and to enjoy Him without end in eternity. Bl. Jan van Ruysbroeck
December 3 (Advent 1). All hearts, O Lord, are in your hands: you can incline, as it pleases you, the most stubborn, and soften the most obdurate. Glorify, on this day, the name and blood of your beloved Son. St. Francis Xavier
December 4. The Son of God, impassible by reason of His Godhead, chose to suffer voluntarily He wiped out our debt, also paying for us a most full and noble ransom. We are truly free through the sacred blood of the Son pleading for us with the Father. St. John Damascene
December 5. Jesus shed all his blood in obedience to the Father, and to save humanity. Jesus, our model, was obedient to the point of death, and death on the cross. Bl. Philip Rinaldi
December 6. Ah, sweet Blood, that raises the dead! You give life, you dissolve the shadows that darken the minds of reasonable creatures, and gives us light! Sweet Blood, unites those who strive, you clothe the naked, you feed the hungry and give to drink to those who thirst for you, and with the milk of your sweetness you nourish the little ones who have made themselves small by true humility, and innocent by true purity. Oh, holy Blood, who shall receive you amiss? The lovers of themselves, because they do not perceive your fragrance. St. Catherine of Siena
December 7. Individual propitiation or redemption is not to be sought, because the price of all is the blood of Christ, with which the Lord Jesus, who alone reconciled the Father, redeemed us. St. Ambrose of Milan
December 8. Mary's blood was the material out of which the Holy Ghost, the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the artificer of the Sacred Humanity, fashioned the Blood of Jesus. Here we see how needful to the joy and gladness of our devotion is the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Who could bear to think that the matter of the Precious Blood had ever been itself corrupted with the taint of sin, that it had once been part of the devil's kingdom, that what was to supply the free price of our redemption was once enslaved to God's darkest, foulest enemy? Is it not indeed an endless daily jubilee to us, that the Church has laid upon us as an article of our faith that sweet truth which the instincts of our devotion had so long made a real part of our belief? Frederick Faber
December 9. Sitting at the right hand of the Father Christ is continually active in the world in order to lead men to the Church and, through it, join them more closely to himself; and, by nourishing them with his own Body and Blood, make them partakers of his glorious life. Hans Urs von Balthasar
December 10. Christ has redeemed us through love, has shed all his Blood in love, and through him we have a mystical dwelling in his heart: The king has taken me to his banquet hall, and the banner he raises over me is love (Song 2:4). The efficacious means to obtain zeal in accomplishing all that we propose to do is devotion to the divine Blood. May it be the joy of our hearts. St. Gaspar del Bufalo
December 11. The arrangement of the names of Christ, however, is manifold….Jesus, because He is a mediator; Vine, because we are redeemed by His blood; Lion, because he is king; Rock, because He is firm; Flower, because He is the chosen one; Prophet, because He has revealed what is to come. Pope St. Damasus I
December 12. My Savior, some will doubt the power of your blood. Yet it is most fitting that the precious blood of the Son of the Virgin should exercise all its power upon her in order to honor the place from which it came. A holy bishop once said that Mary was like all men in that she was redeemed by the blood of her Son, but unique in that this blood was brought forth from her own body. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
December 13. On the last day, Christ Jesus shall hold aloft a glorious scale before his Father. Upon it will lie his holy toil and his innocent suffering, and in it and next to it all the blameless torment, humiliation, and interior pain that was ever suffered by human beings for the love of Christ. Indeed, when the right side of the scales sinks, those rejoice the most who have much upon it. The blood of virgins by its nature, the blood martyrs shed for their Christian faith, and other blood spilled through killing but shed in innocence during justified self-defense: this is what the holy Son of God shall weigh together with his blood, because it was poured out in true innocence. St. Mechtilde of Helfta
December 14 Tree of dazzling beauty, adorned with the purple of the King's blood, and chosen from a stock worthy to bear limbs so sacred. St. Venantius Fortunatus
December 15. Never did our Lord Jesus Christ display such great love as when He suffered the torture of the Cross when He gave His life for us, and washed our sins with His precious Blood. Therefore with the cords of Love, He drew us all to Himself upon the Cross that those who feel the drawing of His death and martyrdom might live with Him in everlasting felicity. Meister Eckhart
December 16. Our view of creation should be like God’s view. We should see it, with all its countless souls, through the illuminated mist of the Precious Blood. Its spiritual scenery should be before us, everything, everywhere, goldenly red. This is the shape, then, which our Father’s love takes to us His creatures. It is an invitation of all of us to the worship and the freedom of the Precious Blood. Frederick Faber
December 17
I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.
I see his face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but his voice—and carven by his power
Rocks are his written words. All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree. Joseph Plunkett
December 18. Is it possible to offer, or even to imagine, a purer kind of prayer than that which shows mercy to one’s torturers by making intercession for them? It was thanks to this kind of prayer that the frenzied persecutors who shed the blood of our Redeemer drank it afterward in faith and proclaimed him to be the Son of God. Pope St. Gregory the Great
December 19. In the Cross of Christ not only is the Redemption accomplished through suffering, but also human suffering itself has been redeemed,. Christ, – without any fault of his own – took on himself “the total evil of sin”. The experience of this evil determined the incomparable extent of Christ’s suffering, which became the price of the Redemption. The Song of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah speaks of this. In later times, the witnesses of the New Covenant, sealed in the Blood of Christ, will speak of this. St. John Paul II
December 20 We have been led out of Egypt where we were serving the devil as a pharaoh, where we were doing works of clay amid earthly desires, and we were laboring much in them. For Christ cried out to us, as if we were making bricks, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened.” Led out of here, we were led over through baptism as through the Red Sea—red for this reason, because consecrated by the blood of Christ—when all our enemies who were assailing us were dead, that is, when our sins have been wiped out. St. Augustine of Hippo
December 21. Why do we speak of someone being ‘on fire with love?’ The answer is simple. Fire not only strives for union with what it embraces, but seeks to transform whatever it embraces into itself. Love does likewise. As it happens to a coal, to be changed and totally converted into fire, so by a worthy reception of the Eucharist, we become changed in a wonderful manner into Christ, are made partakers of His divine nature, and grow somehow to be the very blood-brother (blood-sister) of Him (Jesus Who is), Our Head. St. Peter Canisius
December 22 The goodness of divinity requires that our Savior love us with a special affection; for, as our God is in Him, so, too, our blood is in Him St. Maximus of Turin
December 23. The Son comes forth from the Father; and the Father, out of his love for the world, has given his Son to be slain, “for thou wast slain and by thy blood didst ransom men for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (5:9). The Lamb is God’s mode of involvement in, and commitment to, the world; the Lamb is both “worthy” and “able” not only to symbolize God’s. involvement but to be it. Hans Urs von Balthasar
December 24. We ought to abide in the knowledge of the goodness of God in Himself, perceiving that He has created us in His image and likeness, and re-created us in grace by the Blood of His only-begotten Son, the sweet incarnate Lord; and reflecting how continually the goodness of God works in us. St. Catherine of Siena
December 25. May this divine Infant be pleased to bathe our hearts in His blood and to anoint them with His holy name, in order that the good desires which we conceive may be all purpled and perfumed therewith! St. Francis de Sales
December 26. If to be born of a Virgin was a great miracle, and the amazed evangelist wrote of it: All this happened, what can we say of the Lord's sacrifice? For if the Lord’s birth was called all this, what should we call his crucifixion, the shedding of his blood, and his giving himself to us as a spiritual feast? St. John Chrysostsom
December 27. This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. St. John the Evangelist
December 28. Our Lord told me about three kinds of blood: “The first blood that was shed by Abel, the holy innocents, John the Baptist, and all those who shed their holy innocent blood before the death of our Lord-that was Christ's blood because for his sake they suffered a holy death. The second blood was the blood of the heavenly Father, which Christ poured forth from his innocent heart. The third blood, which shall be shed in Christian faith before the last day, is the blood of the Holy Spirit, for without the Holy Spirit's help no good action has ever been performed. The blood of the martyrs shed for the love of Christ gives participation and a crown. The blood of the Father in Christ gives redemption and faith. The last blood in the Holy Spirit gives perseverance and glory.” St. Mechtilde of Helfta
December 29
A Christian, saved by the blood of Christ,
Ready to suffer with my blood.
This is the sign of the Church always,
The sign of blood. Blood for blood.
His blood given to buy my life,
My blood given to pay for His death,
My death for His death. (T.S. Eliot; Murder in the Cathedral)
December 30 With the light of your mind meditate on Christ’s wounds as he hangs on the cross, the wounds of him who rose again, the blood of the dying, the reward of the faithful, the ransom of the redeemer. Think how much these things are worth; weigh this in the balance of love. Bl. Peter the Venerable
December 31
Salute the last and everlasting day,
Joy at th' uprising of this Sun, and Son,
Ye whose true tears, or tribulation
Have purely wash'd, or burnt your drossy clay.
Behold, the Highest, parting hence away,
Lightens the dark clouds, which He treads upon;
Nor doth He by ascending show alone,
But first He, and He first enters the way.
O strong Ram, which hast batter'd heaven for me!
Mild Lamb, which with Thy Blood hast mark'd the path!
Bright Torch, which shinest, that I the way may see!
O, with Thy own Blood quench Thy own just wrath;
And if Thy Holy Spirit my Muse did raise,
Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise. John Donne