This text was originally published as part of Ad Cenam Agni, a 2023 virtual Lenten Retreat hosted by the Abbot's Circle.
“THIS IS THE CHALICE OF MY BLOOD of the New and Eternal Covenant which will be poured out for you and for many…” How many times have we knelt at Holy Mass when these words were pronounced by the priest over the wine? He invited us to adore, lifting up the chalice now filled with the Precious Blood. He also bent his knee in adoration. Why do we adore this Blood? Because this Blood is Christ. And Christ is God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. And so we adore the Blood of Christ as we adore Christ our God.
Now your blood and my blood is part of us, it is in us; it is, if you will, an organ of our bodies. It tells a lot about us when it is drawn, but it is not us in person. You are not being sent to the lab, but only a part of you. But the Savior’s Blood is the Savior. How so? And how does understanding this help our devotion?
When God the Son took to himself a human nature, this means that the parts of that humanity, that is, the soul, the body, and the blood, were united directly to him in hisDivinity, to him as God. He did not unite himself to an existing man, for then there would be two persons, one human and one divine, with the first being the instrument of the second. No! Christ our God wanted to be a human in his own person, not just use a person to represent himself. He wanted to be intimately united to us as one of us. He is as one with us in our humanness as he has always been to the Father in his godhood. This is so true that Jesus is Son of God and Son of Mary by a single sonhood, not two, but by one filiation, just as I am the son of my father and the son of my mother by single sonship. This is the Incarnation; this is the amazing Divine Maternity of Mary: two natures in one Person, God the Son.
And now we get to the deep truth that underlies our adoration of the Blood of Christ our God; from the first instant of that Incarnation in Mary’s womb, the Person of the Divine Son of God was never separated from the parts of his Humanity. Among themselves those parts could be separated by death, as Our Lord’s soul left his Body when he said “It is finished.” And as his Body and His Blood were separated in his Passion, as Blood flowed from his many wounds. He did not undergo corruption as a mere human person would, he was personally united to his Soul, His Body, and His Blood all the while. So when his Soul went among the dead, it was God, and they adored him, when his lifeless Body was laid in the tomb, it was God, it was adorable, and when his Blood was spilt upon the ground, it was God who fell upon the earth in mercy!
Let us ponder this amazing fact of the Divine Blood as we call upon him for pardon for sin and protection from evil in this week before the holiest of weeks. That way we will share deeply in the Supper of the Lamb, as we are washed in him, in his Precious Blood.
