Today’s homily: The Most Precious Blood of Jesus

When We Ask for Bread

MASS Redemisti nos
LESSON Hebrews 9:11–15
GOSPEL St John 19:30–35
PROPER LAST GOSPEL St Mark 8:1–9
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“Thou hast redeemed us, O Lord, by Thy Blood.”

Not advised us. Not encouraged us. Not affirmed us.

Redeemed us.

That word contains the judgement of God upon fallen man and the measure of His mercy towards him. We were captives who could not free ourselves, debtors who could not pay, sinners who could not restore the grace we had lost. Therefore the Son of God came, not merely to speak, but to offer; not merely to teach, but to die.

The Collect calls His Blood pretium salutis nostrae—the price of our salvation.

A price means that something was owed. A price means that redemption cost what sentimentality wishes to forget. It means that sin is not a weakness to be explained away, nor a wound to be merely soothed, nor a personal choice to be affirmed. Sin is an offence against God, a death within the soul, a captivity from which only sacrifice could deliver us.

And so a Victim was required.

The Epistle shows us Christ entering the true sanctuary, not with the blood of goats or calves, “but by virtue of His own Blood, having obtained eternal redemption.”

Behold the whole mystery: the Priest carries no victim other than Himself. The hand that offers is the hand pierced by the nail. The Priest before the Father is the Lamb slain upon the earth. He offers, and He is offered; He pleads, and His wounds are the plea.

His Blood is Precious because it is His: formed in the immaculate womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, united inseparably to the Person of the Eternal Word, and poured forth by One who is both God and man.

One drop possessed infinite worth. Yet divine charity does not calculate with the meanness of men. He poured It forth at the Circumcision, in Gethsemane, beneath the scourges, under the thorns, from His hands and feet, and at last from His opened side.

“It is consummated.”

The lance enters His Heart, and Blood and water flow.

From that opened side comes the Church. From that fountain come Baptism and the Holy Eucharist. From Calvary come the means by which sinners are washed, nourished, forgiven, sanctified, and brought home to God.

The Church was born from sacrifice, and she cannot live by anything else.

This is why the Holy Eucharist is not one devotion among many. It is redemption made present and given to us. It is the Body delivered for us and the Blood poured out unto the remission of sins. It is the Sacrifice of Calvary beneath sacramental veils.

The Mass does not place before us a memory of an absent Christ. It places before the Father the present Victim. The Priest is the same; the Victim is the same; the oblation is the same. Upon the Cross the sacrifice was bloody; upon the altar it is unbloody. But here is Calvary.

And then comes the marvel before which the angels themselves adore: the Victim becomes our food.

The price of redemption is placed upon the tongue of the redeemed.

Christ does not merely rescue us and send us away. He feeds those whom He has purchased. Thus the Gospel of the commemorated Sunday speaks with extraordinary force: the multitude is fainting, and Christ gives it bread. Upon this altar He gives us not merely bread, but Himself.

The Blood that redeems and the Bread that feeds are one mystery.

“The chalice of benediction which we bless,” says the Offertory, “is it not the communion of the Blood of Christ? And the bread which we break, is it not the partaking of the Body of the Lord?”

The Church has no other food to invent. The Apostles possess no substitute. They receive from Christ and distribute what He gives.

That is apostolic authority: not invention, but transmission; not the manufacture of a religion suited to the age, but the faithful handing-on of what came from the hands of the Lord.

Here we touch the wound from which the Church now bleeds.

The deepest crisis of our time is the loss of sacrificial consciousness.

Once sacrifice is obscured, redemption soon becomes unintelligible. Once redemption is forgotten, sin becomes a matter of therapy rather than guilt. Propitiation disappears. The confessional empties. The priest becomes a chairman. The altar becomes a table. The Mass becomes an assembly. The Church begins to speak more readily of affirmation than conversion, of earthly fraternity than eternal salvation.

The crisis is a crisis of Calvary.

This is why the conflict surrounding the Society of Saint Pius X cannot be reduced to nostalgia, temperament, ceremony, or the preferences of one party within the Church. Beneath every canonical dispute lies the more terrible question: will the Church continue to live consciously from the redeeming Sacrifice of Christ?

The traditional Roman Mass answers that question without hesitation.

Its silence declares that God is present. Its eastward orientation declares that priest and people await the returning Lord. Its Offertory declares that a Victim is being prepared. Its Canon declares sacrifice, propitiation, judgement, mercy, the living and the dead. Its genuflections confess the Real Presence. Its every gesture says: this is not our gathering; this is His Sacrifice.

We have not defended this Mass because it is old.

We have defended it because it tells the truth about God, sin, priesthood, worship, and redemption.

We have defended it because it does not permit us to forget the Blood.

Father Pagliarani recently placed before the Pope the words of Our Lord: if a son asks his father for bread, will he give him a stone?

That question belongs at the altar.

We ask for Bread: for the doctrine that leads souls to Christ; for the priesthood ordered to sacrifice; for the worship that bends the knee before the Victim; for the Mass that speaks without ambiguity of Calvary; for the religion that remembers why the Blood was shed.

And we have been given a stone.

Not only the stone of censure, but the heavier stone of the crisis itself.

For the crisis is the Passion we have been made to endure.

We endure the bewilderment of seeing the ancient Mass restricted while grave confusion is tolerated. We endure the accusation that fidelity to inherited doctrine and worship is itself divisive. We endure the spectacle of sacrifice fading from ecclesial consciousness while those who plead for its preservation are treated as though their hunger were the danger.

We ask for the Bread of Calvary, and our hunger is counted against us.

That is our Passion.

We do not stand outside the crisis and comment upon it. We carry it in our parishes, our families, our vocations, our friendships, and our consciences. We carry it in churches closed to us, altars denied to us, suspicions directed towards us, and censures imposed upon those who insist that the Church cannot live without what Christ gave her.

We suffer because the Mass has taught us what is being lost.

At this altar we learned that sin requires expiation, that mercy was purchased, that the priest exists to offer, that the Victim is real, that the dead still await our suffrages, and that the salvation of souls is not a slogan but the purpose for which God shed His Blood.

We have been schooled in sacrifice; therefore the eclipse of sacrifice wounds us.

We have been taught redemption; therefore a Church reluctant to speak of redemption grieves us.

We know the Mass as Calvary; therefore we cannot calmly watch Calvary disappear beneath the language of community, sentiment, and social purpose.

This does not make us better than other Catholics. It does not make our every judgement prudent or our every word just. The old Mass does not canonise those who attend it. It judges us more severely because it shows us more clearly what holiness costs.

But perhaps Providence has allowed us to feel this wound because He intends us to offer it.

For the Mass we defend must now become the form of our response.

Christ did not answer cruelty with cruelty. He did not turn His Cross into a weapon against those who placed Him upon it. He offered Himself for them.

We must not answer stone with stone.

Our grief must not become bitterness. Our fidelity must not become vanity. Our resistance must not become hatred. We must not allow the defence of the true Mass to produce in us a spirit contrary to the Victim of the Mass.

If this crisis is our Passion, then it must also become our oblation.

Our humiliation must be offered for the Church. Our exclusion must become intercession. Our tears must be mingled with the chalice. Our wounds must be placed within His wounds.

We have asked for Bread; now we must learn the law of bread.

Bread is taken.

Bread is blessed.

Bread is broken.

Bread is given.

It is not enough to defend the Sacrifice. We must consent to be sacrificed.

It is not enough to adore the Victim. We must be united to the Victim.

It is not enough to lament the crisis. We must carry it to the altar and permit Christ to transform it into redemption.

The world may never understand this. Ecclesiastical officials may never acknowledge it. History may not vindicate us in the manner we imagine. But the deepest vindication of Tradition will not be victory in argument. It will be the sight of Catholics suffering without hatred, resisting without rebellion, confessing the Faith without compromise, and remaining at the foot of the Cross when so many have fled from it.

Yet before we speak of the failures of the Church, the Precious Blood judges each one of us.

Have we confessed our mortal sins? Have we forgiven our enemies? Have we abandoned impurity? Have we made restitution? Have we surrendered pride, resentment, cowardice, and self-will?

The Blood of Christ was not shed to make sin tolerable. It was shed to cleanse our conscience “from dead works, to serve the living God.”

We cannot defend the traditional Mass while refusing the traditional Catholic life. The altar demands prayer, penance, chastity, fasting, confession, charity, courage, and the daily death of self.

Soon the words of consecration will be spoken. The substance of bread will become the Body of Christ; the substance of wine, His Precious Blood. The Sacrifice of Calvary will stand upon this altar. The price will be offered. The Victim will be given.

Here is the Bread for which we hunger.

Here is the answer to the stone.

Here is the healing of the crisis.

Not a programme, but the Sacrifice.

Not affirmation without repentance, but redemption.

Not a Church contemplating herself, but the Church kneeling before the Lamb who was slain.

May the Precious Blood cleanse us.

May the Bread of Life sustain us.

May the Holy Sacrifice renew the Church.

And may the Passion we now endure be united so perfectly to the Passion of Christ that, through His mercy, our suffering may become an oblation for the restoration of His Mystical Body.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

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