The Blood of the Everlasting Testament: The Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Month of July
July is consecrated to the Most Precious Blood of Jesus: the price of our redemption, the laver of sinners, the life of the Church and the living pledge of the eternal covenant. Traditionally celebrated on the first Sunday of the month, the feast gathers into one solemn act of adoration the sacrifice of Calvary, the grace of the sacraments and the Eucharistic presence of the risen Christ.
The month of July opens beneath the Cross. June has contemplated the Heart which loved mankind so greatly; July contemplates the Blood which that Heart poured forth. The two devotions cannot be separated. The Sacred Heart reveals the source of Christ’s redeeming love; the Precious Blood reveals the price which that love chose to pay. The Heart tells us why He suffered. The Blood tells us how completely He gave Himself.
The Church does not honour the Precious Blood as though it were a sacred object detached from Christ. It is the Blood of the Incarnate Word: human Blood assumed by the Son of God, poured out by a divine Person and now living within the glorified Body of the risen Saviour. It is therefore adorable with the worship of latria due to Christ Himself. Father Frederick William Faber insisted that it is not merely a relic to be reverenced, but the Blood of God made man, inseparably belonging to the Person whom heaven and earth adore.¹
This is why the Church calls it precious. Its worth cannot be measured by quantity. Its value arises from the dignity of the Person whose Blood it is. One drop, considered in relation to the divine Person of the Word, possesses a worth beyond the created universe. The familiar verse traditionally associated with St Thomas Aquinas expresses the doctrine with exactness:
Pie pellicane, Jesu Domine,
Me immundum munda tuo Sanguine,
Cujus una stilla salvum facere
Totum mundum quit ab omni scelere.
“Lord Jesus, loving Pelican, cleanse me, the unclean, in Thy Blood, one drop of which can save the whole world from every sin.” The whole Blood was shed, not because the smallest portion lacked infinite worth, but because divine love willed to manifest itself with a prodigality equal to the enormity of human sin.²
The First Sunday of July
The devotion is as ancient as the apostolic preaching, but its universal liturgical feast is comparatively recent. During the upheavals of 1848–49, Blessed Pius IX was driven from Rome and took refuge at Gaeta. Don Giovanni Merlini, then superior of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, urged the Pope to extend the feast to the universal Church. On 30 June 1849, as the revolutionary regime in Rome was collapsing, Pius IX declared his intention to do so. By the decree of 10 August, he appointed the first Sunday of July for the universal celebration of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.³
The Sunday was not chosen accidentally. It followed closely upon the feasts of St John the Baptist, who proclaimed Christ as the Lamb of God, and of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, by whose preaching the Church was established among the nations. Dom Prosper Guéranger sees the liturgical sequence as a single movement: the Baptist points to the Lamb, Peter fixes His throne, Paul prepares His Bride, and then the Church appears holding the chalice of the nuptial feast.⁴
The later reform of St Pius X transferred the observance to the fixed date of 1 July as part of the wider removal of many saints’ feasts and devotional celebrations from Sundays. The older Roman observance, however, places it on the first Sunday of July. That Sunday setting is theologically eloquent. The Precious Blood is contemplated not simply as an isolated episode of the Passion, but in the light of the Resurrection, Pentecost and the life of the Church. It is the Blood of the Lamb who was slain and now lives; the Blood poured out on Calvary and communicated to the faithful by the Holy Ghost through the Church’s sacramental life.
July became the month of the Precious Blood because the feast stood at its threshold and gave its character to the weeks which followed. Pope John XXIII remembered that his own parents recited the Litany of the Precious Blood every day during July. In his apostolic letter Inde a Primis, he urged the faithful to spend the feast and month meditating more fervently upon the Blood as “the price of our redemption, the pledge of salvation and life eternal.”⁵
The Blood Foretold
Sacred Scripture prepares the mystery from its earliest pages. Abel’s blood cries from the earth for judgment; Christ’s Blood speaks “better than that of Abel,” because it pleads not for vengeance but for mercy. The blood of the paschal lamb marks the doors of the Israelites and preserves them from death. Moses seals the covenant at Sinai by sprinkling the people and declaring: “This is the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you.” The Law teaches that the life of the flesh is in the blood and that blood is given upon the altar for the expiation of the soul. All these are figures awaiting their fulfilment.⁶
The prophets deepen the image. Isaias beholds the conqueror returning from Edom with garments dyed red, like one who has trodden the winepress alone. The figure passes into the Apocalypse, where the victorious Word of God appears clothed in a garment sprinkled with blood. The liturgy of the feast draws upon these texts because the Blood is not merely the sign of Christ’s humiliation. It is also the ensign of His victory. The Crucified has conquered by being slain.
At the Last Supper the figures become reality. Our Lord takes the chalice and declares: “This is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins.” The expression gathers together Sinai, sacrifice, covenant and expiation. Christ is at once Priest, Victim and altar. The Blood is His own; He offers it freely; and the covenant it establishes is not provisional but eternal.
St Paul therefore speaks of redemption through Christ’s Blood, justification in His Blood, peace through the Blood of His Cross and access to the heavenly sanctuary through His Blood. St Peter reminds the faithful that they were not redeemed with corruptible things, silver or gold, but “with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb unspotted and undefiled.” St John declares that the Blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin, while the saints of the Apocalypse overcome the dragon “by the blood of the Lamb.”⁷
The biblical doctrine is therefore larger than a sentimental remembrance of the Passion. The Blood is sacrificial, expiatory, covenantal, victorious, cleansing and life-giving. It purchases the Church, reconciles sinners, opens heaven, defeats the devil and nourishes the faithful.
The Church Born from the Opened Side
The Fathers found the whole mystery concentrated in St John’s account of the piercing of Christ’s side: “One of the soldiers with a spear opened his side, and immediately there came out blood and water.”
St Augustine attends closely to the Evangelist’s word. St John does not merely say that the side was struck or wounded, but that it was opened. For Augustine, the gate of life was opened, and from it flowed the sacraments without which there is no entrance into true life. As Eve was formed from the side of the sleeping Adam, so the Church, the Bride of the new Adam, is formed from the side of Christ sleeping in death upon the Cross.⁸
St John Chrysostom likewise sees Baptism and the Eucharist in the two streams. Water regenerates; Blood nourishes. The Church is born from both. He tells the communicant to approach the chalice as though drinking from the very side of Christ. The Eucharist is not a distant symbol of Calvary. It brings the faithful into sacramental contact with the opened Heart of the Redeemer.⁹
St Ambrose summarises the mystery in a phrase repeated throughout later theology: water flowed to cleanse, Blood to redeem. St Leo the Great teaches that the sacred Blood of Christ quenched the flaming sword which barred access to the tree of life. That sword had guarded Paradise since the fall of Adam; the Blood of the new Adam extinguished it and opened the way home.¹⁰
The patristic vision is profoundly ecclesial. The Church is not a society formed around an absent teacher. She is the Bride purchased by His Blood, born from His side and sustained by the sacraments which flow from His Passion. Christian life is existence within that redeeming stream.
The Doctrine of the Angelic Doctor
St Thomas Aquinas gives theological precision to what Scripture proclaims and the Fathers contemplate. Christ’s Passion saves us, he teaches, under several complementary aspects: by merit, satisfaction, sacrifice, redemption and efficient causality.
It is meritorious because Christ’s obedience and charity obtain grace for His members. It is satisfactory because His loving obedience offers to the Father more than the sins of mankind had taken away. It is sacrificial because Christ willingly offers Himself to God as a victim of sweetest fragrance. It is redemptive because His life, which is in His Blood, is the price by which we are freed from the bondage of sin. It is efficient because the humanity of Christ, united to the divine Person, acts as the instrument of the Godhead and therefore communicates divine power.¹¹
This prevents two opposite errors. The first reduces the Cross to an example of courage or a display of sympathy. The second imagines the Father as a hostile creditor whose anger must be bought off by an unwilling Son. For St Thomas, the Passion is the work of the undivided Trinity. The Father gives the Son; the Son offers Himself freely; the Holy Ghost is the eternal Spirit through whom He offers Himself without spot. The sacrifice reveals the divine love which preceded it.
The Blood is the price of redemption, but it is not paid to the devil. Satan possesses no rightful ownership over mankind. The price is offered to God in satisfaction for sin and in restoration of the order which sin violated. Christ’s charity is greater than the malice of those who crucified Him, and His offering is not merely sufficient but superabundant for the sins of the whole world.¹²
Yet the fruits of the Passion must be applied to individual souls. St Thomas teaches that this application takes place through faith informed by charity and through the sacraments, which derive their power from Christ’s Passion. The Blood was shed for all, but men must enter the covenant, receive its sacramental life and persevere in grace. Devotion to the Precious Blood can never become a substitute for repentance, confession, the Mass or Holy Communion. Properly understood, it leads directly to them.
The Catholic Exegetical Tradition
Cornelius à Lapide gathers the patristic and scholastic inheritance in his commentary upon the opened side. The water and Blood, he explains, show the truth of Christ’s humanity while also signifying the supernatural birth of the Church. The Church is purchased, founded and sanctified by the Blood of Christ. Water signifies Baptism, the beginning of Christian life; Blood signifies the Eucharist, its nourishment and perfection.¹³
À Lapide then follows the mystery through the whole sacramental economy. The Church is born in Baptism, strengthened in Confirmation, fed in the Eucharist, healed in Penance, fortified in Extreme Unction, governed through Holy Orders and extended through Matrimony. The sacraments are not seven disconnected religious ceremonies. They are the ordered channels by which the merits of the Passion reach the members of Christ.
The Epistle of the feast, taken from Hebrews, makes the same argument through the imagery of the Temple. The high priest of the Old Covenant entered the earthly sanctuary with the blood of animals. Christ enters the true sanctuary, “neither by the blood of goats or of calves, but by his own blood,” obtaining eternal redemption. The old blood purified only according to the flesh; the Blood of Christ cleanses the conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
The contrast is not between cruel primitive religion and enlightened spirituality. It is between figure and fulfilment, shadow and substance. The ancient sacrifices were divine preparations. Their very inadequacy taught Israel to await a Victim whose offering could truly reach the conscience, forgive sin and restore communion with God.
The Blood in the Lives of the Mystics
What the theologians define, the mystics taste. Few saints speak of the Precious Blood with the intensity of St Catherine of Siena. Her letters and Dialogue are saturated with it. She addresses correspondents as though they must live, breathe and labour within the Blood. For her, it is the revelation of truth because it discloses at once the horror of sin and the measureless love of God.
In the Dialogue, Christ’s Blood is the continual baptism made available through contrition and sacramental confession. Priests possess, in Catherine’s striking phrase, the “keys of the Blood”: in absolution, the fruit of the Passion is poured upon the repentant soul. The Blood does not excuse sin; it makes genuine repentance possible. It does not make confession unnecessary; it gives confession its power.¹⁴
Catherine’s language of being immersed, washed and even inebriated in the Blood is not religious extravagance. It expresses the soul’s astonishment that mercy should be so abundant. The saints do not look upon Calvary as spectators. They enter its movement of self-offering. Having received mercy, they desire to spend themselves for God and the salvation of their neighbour.
Father Faber develops the same intuition for the modern Catholic world. The Precious Blood, he writes, traverses the whole Church, gives her unity and animates her supernatural life. From it come martyrdoms, vocations, virginity, penance, heroic charity and every grace of sanctity. The sacraments keep the virtue of the redeeming Blood flowing throughout the Mystical Body.¹⁵
Devotion to the Precious Blood therefore produces neither passivity nor morbid fascination. It makes saints. The soul which knows the price of its redemption can no longer treat sin as trivial, grace as commonplace or another human being as worthless.
The Liturgy of the Feast
The Mass begins in heaven: “Thou hast redeemed us, O Lord, in Thy Blood, out of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made us to our God a kingdom.” The redeemed themselves interpret the mystery. They do not praise their own innocence, achievement or moral superiority. Their white garments have been washed in the Blood of the Lamb.
The Collect names the Blood as the price of salvation and asks that those who honour it on earth may be defended by its power and rejoice in its everlasting fruit. The Church does not merely recall that the Blood once existed. She confesses its present power.
The Epistle presents Christ entering the heavenly sanctuary with His own Blood. The Gradual declares that this is the One who came by water and Blood. The Gospel brings us to the Cross and the opened side. The Offertory identifies the chalice of blessing as communion in the Blood of Christ. The Communion returns to Hebrews: Christ was offered once to exhaust the sins of many and shall appear again for the salvation of those who await Him.
The movement is complete. We begin among the redeemed in heaven, return to Calvary, approach the chalice and end awaiting the glorious return of the High Priest. Past sacrifice, present sacrament and future glory are held together.
Guéranger explains why this feast remains necessary after Good Friday and Corpus Christi. Good Friday shows the Blood poured out; Corpus Christi adores the sacrifice perpetuated upon the altar; the feast of the Precious Blood sets before us the Blood of the Testament, the pledge of the alliance and the nuptial gift by which Christ unites the Church to Himself.¹⁶
The Blood upon the Altar
The Precious Blood is not shed again at Mass. Christ, risen from the dead, dies no more. The sacrifice of Calvary was offered once in a bloody manner and can never be repeated. Yet that one sacrifice is made sacramentally present upon the altar. The same Priest offers; the same Victim is present; the sacramental separation of Body and Blood signifies the death which took place upon the Cross.
Under either species the whole Christ is present—Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity—because the risen Christ can no longer be divided. Under the appearance of wine, however, the Blood is present by the force of the words of consecration; under the appearance of bread, it is present by concomitance because the living Christ is whole and indivisible.
The feast therefore forms a school of priestly and Eucharistic faith. When the chalice is elevated, the faithful look upon the price of the world. When the priest receives the Precious Blood, he drinks from the side of Christ. When the faithful receive the Sacred Host, they receive no bloodless fragment, but the entire living Saviour, including His Precious Blood.
This is why devotion to the Blood must foster reverence at Mass, gratitude after Communion, care in avoiding sacrilege and confidence in the infinite value of the Holy Sacrifice offered for the living and the dead.
Living the Month of July
July should be marked by the daily Litany of the Most Precious Blood, by meditation upon the Passion, by worthy confession and Communion, and by acts of reparation for blasphemy, sacrilege and indifference towards the Blessed Sacrament. Families may place an image of the Crucifixion or the opened side of Christ in a place of honour and recite together the invocation: “Most Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, save us and the whole world.”
The seven principal sheddings of Christ’s Blood provide a simple pattern of meditation: at the Circumcision; in the agony of the garden; at the scourging; beneath the crown of thorns; upon the way of the Cross; from His hands and feet in the Crucifixion; and from His side opened by the lance. Each reveals a different wound inflicted by sin and a corresponding grace of healing.
The devotion should also awaken charity towards souls. Every person encountered in July is someone for whom Christ shed His Blood. The unborn child, the dying sinner, the prisoner, the abandoned elderly person, the unbeliever and the enemy all possess a value measured not by usefulness, approval or social standing, but by the price offered for their redemption.
It should awaken prayer for priests, who daily hold the chalice of salvation; for missionaries, who carry the fruits of the Blood to the nations; for persecuted Christians, who mingle their own blood with the testimony of the Lamb; and for the souls in Purgatory, who can no longer merit for themselves but may be assisted by the sacrifice of the altar.
Above all, the month should produce hatred of sin and confidence in mercy. To honour the Blood while making peace with mortal sin would be a contradiction. To contemplate its infinite sufficiency while despairing of forgiveness would also be a contradiction. The Blood condemns presumption because it reveals what sin cost; it condemns despair because that price has been paid.
July places the chalice before us. In it is the Blood which cried from the ground more mercifully than Abel’s; the Blood which fulfilled the Passover; the Blood of the new and everlasting covenant; the Blood which opened the side of Christ, gave birth to the Church, filled the sacraments, clothed the martyrs and washed the robes of the saints.
The proper response is not sentiment alone but adoration, repentance, thanksgiving and imitation. Christ poured out His Blood rather than withhold Himself from us. Those redeemed at such a price must no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again for them.
“Having therefore, brethren, a confidence in the entering into the holies by the blood of Christ, a new and living way which he hath dedicated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh: let us draw near with a true heart in fulness of faith.”
- Frederick William Faber, The Precious Blood; or, The Price of Our Salvation (Baltimore: John Murphy, 1860), chap. 1.
- John XXIII, Inde a Primis, 30 June 1960; St Thomas Aquinas, traditionally attributed, Adoro te devote.
- Ulrich Müller, “Feast of the Most Precious Blood,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 12 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911).
- Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, vol. 12, “Feast of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
- John XXIII, Inde a Primis, 30 June 1960.
- Genesis 4:10; Exodus 12:1–28; Exodus 24:3–8; Leviticus 17:11; Hebrews 12:24.
- Matthew 26:28; Romans 3:25 and 5:9; Ephesians 1:7 and 2:13; Colossians 1:20; 1 Peter 1:18–19; 1 John 1:7; Apocalypse 7:14 and 12:11.
- St Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, tractate 120.
- St John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of John, homily 85.
- St Ambrose, commentary on St Luke; St Leo the Great, sermons on the Passion.
- St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, III, q. 48, aa. 1–6.
- Ibid., III, q. 48, aa. 2 and 4; q. 49, aa. 1 and 4.
- Cornelius à Lapide, Commentary on the Gospel according to St John, commentary on John 19:34.
- St Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, especially the treatise on divine providence and the passages concerning the “baptism of Blood.”
- Faber, The Precious Blood, especially chaps. 1 and 6.
- Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, vol. 12, “Feast of the Most Precious Blood.”
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