After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’ And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, singing, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.’
Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, ‘Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?’ I said to him, ‘Sir, you are the one that knows.’ Then he said to me, ‘These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’(Revelation 7:9-17)
RESPONSORY
The redeemed cried out in a loud voice:
-- Salvation comes from our God and from the Lamb.
To our God be blessing, glory and wisdom. –
-- Salvation comes from our God and from the Lamb.
From the medieval “Quest for the Holy Grail” and “The Grail Legend” by Emma Jung (1955) and Marie-Louise von Franz (1998)
Bors, when you had received the High Master, the High Companion, that is, when you had partaken of the body of Our Lord, you set out to learn if Our Lord would vouchsafe to you to find the precious treasure which will fall to the knights of Jesus Christ, the true men of worth in this Quest. You had not gone far when Our Lord appeared to you in the form of a bird, and manifested to you the grief and pain He suffered for us. First I will rehearse what it was you saw. When the bird came to the tree that was without leaf and fruit, he looked at his young and saw that none of them was alive. Then he took his place among them and began to smite his breast with his beak until the blood streamed forth; then he died, while the young birds revived with his blood. This much you saw. Now I will tell you the meaning of it. “The bird signifies Our Creator, who formed man in His own likeness. And when he was driven out of paradise because of his own sin, he came into a land where he found naught but death, for there was no life there. The leafless and fruitless tree plainly signifies the world, where there was nothing then but unhappiness and poverty and suffering. The young birds signify the human race, the members of which were then so forlorn that they were all bound for hell, the good as well as the bad, for they were all alike in merit. When the Son of God beheld this, He ascended the tree, namely the Cross, and was there pierced with the beak of the lance, that is, the point, in the left side until the blood gushed forth. With this blood the young birds were revived, for they were His own creation; for He delivered them from hell where all was death, and where even yet there is no life. This bounty to the world, to me and you and all other sinners, God came to reveal to you in the guise of a bird, in order that you should not fear to die for Him any more than He did for you.
It is clear that blood is essentially a mana substance and anything which possess great mana invariably owes its effectiveness to an underlyingarchetypalidea. In this case it is the belief in the identity of blood=life=soul. The conception of blood as soul prevailed in the Middle Ages, too, according to which the Eucharistic blood represented the soul of Christ, and for the same reason the Grail vessel also contained his soul.
If such mysterious power is attributed to ordinary human or even to animal blood, how much more then to the blood of Christ! In the Christian doctrine it is precisely this blood that is the means of salvation for all humanity. It strikes one as significant that it is not only the death of Christ, the actual fact of his dying, that is stressed as the redeeming factor, but just as much, if not more so, the blood shed in the process, because it is in the blood that the essentially atoning power adheres. When, in most of the versions, the bleeding lance appears as pertaining to the Grail, this is becauseit is the instrument by which the redeeming blood was brought forth into manifestation.The drops of blood flowing from the tip, which in some versions drip into the Grail vessel, naturally also symbolize the sacrificial death of Christ, eternally taking place. By reason of these views the blood became the central sacrament and mystery of the Christian ritual. At all times, but quite particularly in the Middle Ages, this concept of the blood and the ideas connected with it stirred men’s feelings to their depths. Evidence for this is to be found in abundance in the writings of the Church, for the Church took great pains to grasp the wondrous mystery intellectually, and in the accounts of pious believers who sought, through self-abnegation and participation in the mystery, to experience the meaning of Christ’s suffering.
Inasmuch as Longinus’ lance causes the redeeming blood of the Saviour to flow, it is of the greatest importance….It therefore symbolizesthe human capacity for continually being able to discern what is essential in the latent symbol of God, and this enables the symbol increasingly to dispense its inexhaustible, life-giving, spiritual strength to humanity. In so far as Christ ascended to Heaven with his body, he left no traces of his physical life on earth apart from this very blood which remained on the lance and in the Grail vessel. It is therefore the only permanent evidence of hisearthlylife and of the “substance of his soul.” Thus the lance is also man’s arrow of love, aimed at the heart of Christ, and it was looked upon as such in the Middle Ages.
In that way, fantasies, feelings and emotions rising up from the unconscious, as well as audacious new thought contents had a better chance of finding expression in those traditions, so that it could in fact be said that the living essence of Christ, his blood, lived on especially intensively in such interpretations and that in transforming itself, it also developed further….The vessel containing Christ’s blood is a symbol that emerges with absolute spontaneity….It is as though it contained the living remnant of Christ andhis soul-substance, that element out of which a mystical continuation of his being is made possible.
Musical Selection
Hi qui amici sunti stolis albi, qui sunt, et unde venerunt? Hi sunt, qui venerunt de tribulatione magna et laverunt stolas suas, et dealbaverunt eas in sanguine Agni.Ideo sunt ante thronum Dei, et serviunt ei die ac note. Beati qui lavant stolas suas in sanguine Agni.
These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from? These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore, they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night. Blessed are they who was their robes in the blood of the Lamb.
Collect
God of our salvation and our freedom,
you have redeemed us by the blood of your Son.
Hear the voices of your people
and grant that through you we may have life
and in you find eternal refuge.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God for ever and ever. Amen. (Friday of the Fourth Week of Easter)