Feast Of The Most Precious Blood Of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Feast Day 1 July.

Text and Illustration taken from UNA VOCE OF ORANGE COUNTY
which states that all Text and Illustrations are taken from the Saint Andrew Daily Missal,
1952 Edition, with the kind permission of St. Bonaventure Press.

Feast Of The Most Precious Blood Of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Feast Day 1 July.

Double of the First Class.

Red Vestments.

The Most Precious Blood Of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Liturgy, that admirable summary of the history of the Church, reminds us every year that, at this date in 1849, thanks to the French Army, the Revolution which had driven the Pope from Rome was vanquished.

To perpetuate the memory of this triumph, and to show that it was due to the Saviour's merits, Pope Pius IX, at the time a refugee at Gaeta, instituted the Feast of The Precious Blood.

Pope Pius XI, in 1934, raised it to the First Class.

The Antiphon at the Magnificat

for Second Vespers

on the Feast of the Most Precious Blood

of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Available on YouTube at

http://youtu.be/99bEwmPUYpw.

Habebitis autem*

hunc diem in monumentum:

Et celebrabitis eum solemnem

Domino in generationibus

vestris cultu sempiterno.

Ye shall observe this day for a Memorial:

And ye shall keep it holy unto the Lord,

Throughout your generations

With an everlasting worship.

[Exodus, Chapter xii, Verse 14]

The Heart of Jesus has made this adorable Blood circulate in His limbs; wherefore, as on the Feast of the Sacred Heart, the Gospel presents to our view the thrust of the lance which pierced the side of the Divine Crucified, Blood and Water gushing forth. [The Office of Matins speaks of the Blood which Jesus shed at the Circumcision, in the Garden of Olives, the Flagellation, the Crowning of Thorns and on the Cross.]

Thus become united the two testimonies which the Holy Ghost bore to the Messias, when He was Baptised in the water of the Jordan and when He was Baptised in Blood on the Cross (Gradual). [The Docetes taught that Jesus  was the Christ at His Baptism, and had thus come by Water, but being no longer Christ on the Cross, He had not come by Blood.]

Let us do homage to The Precious Blood of Our Redeemer, which the Priest offers to God on the Altar.