Feast of Precious Blood of Jesus, 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2012
(Full text of sermon) Today would be the Feast of the Precious Blood of Jesus. Of course, it is the counterpart of the Feast of the Body of Christ—Corpus Christi. I will admit, I like the way that traditionally, the Church separates the two feasts because it gives us an opportunity to meditate upon the notion of sacrifice—Christ’s Sacrifice and the Mass as sacrifice.
All peoples have offered sacrifice to their gods. It is just something that instinctively we have always felt that we must do. But Calvary and the Mass are special. Let us see how.
Difference between the pagan’s sacrifice and ours
First of all what is a sacrifice? A sacrifice is the ritual offering of ourselves to God. We tell God that we belong to Him and acknowledge before Him that all that we have comes from Him. We beg forgiveness for our sins and an increase in God’s precious life. And we do this by offering ourselves by means of the death another being—whom we call the victim.
In other words we make of ourselves a sacrifice—but we use something or someone to stand in our place. We remove the victim from this life—but it is ourselves whom we really mean. The victim of a sacrifice—it could be a goat or a lamb—is killed. The blood spills forth—it is separated from the body, the victim dies, and is no longer in this world.
It is the death that is the defining moment of sacrifice—because the victim changes from being alive to being dead—by the separation of blood from the body. In that sense—the victim goes back to God by its death—and takes us, in a supernatural way, with him.
There are always two elements in any Sacrifice. There is the offering, the oblation where we say to God “Please accept us God—whole and entire as your people.” Then there is the change in the status of the victim, the immolation that accomplishes the sacrifice by taking the victim from life to death. You must have these two elements, oblation and immolation—or you don’t have a sacrifice.
Now all of this is vitally important for our understanding of everything in our Catholic religion—from the way we understand our beliefs to why we worship in the way we do.
The only sacrifice that worked
Our faith, our salvation, our redemption—our chance to get to heaven begins with the Sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross—the only sacrifice that ever worked. Jesus is the Oblation. By His outstretched arms He pleads to the Father, “Father, Forgive them for they know not what they do.” He is also the Victim—the one who IS slaughtered. His Hands and Feet and Side are pierced so that His Most Precious Blood would be poured out from His Most Precious Body. The Sacrifice of Calvary means His life for our lives—His Blood for our salvation. His Body for our redemption.
If we are ever to understand the nature of the Mass it is that the Mass (related to Calvary) is also a sacrifice. In fact the Mass is the re-enactment of Jesus’ Sacrifice where He is both the Priest and Victim. He is the Offerer and the Lamb. His death —as His Blood is drained from His body and He dies—opens for us the gates of Heaven.
The Mass can never be understood as anything less than the Sacrifice of Christ to His Father for the sake of His love for us.
The Mass is not just a moment where we gather and we sing songs and read from the Bible. The Mass is not just where we hear nice words from the priest—“I’m ok. You are okay”. The Mass is not about our feeling good—or about our edification or our receiving holy thoughts and warm feelings inside.
Our act of worship is an offering
The Mass is an act of worship where Jesus offers Himself and us to God the Father. The same offering that occurred two thousand years before in Jerusalem happens again before our very eyes at the Mass.
This is the meaning of the Mass. This is the reason the Mass is an act of worship beyond anything we can do or feel. This is why none of our sentiments or songs or feelings—or even language—actually matters. Because the Mass is not about us. It is about Jesus. When the priest—at the very words of Consecration—says “This is my Body” and “This is my Blood”, he plucks that eternal Sacrifice of Christ out of heaven and places it right there on our altars.
Just as the essential moment of Sacrifice on Calvary was the separation of Jesus’ Blood from His Body—so too is the separation of the Body and Blood the essential moment of sacrifice at the Mass—though this time the separation is symbolic.
Therefore the separate consecrations of the bread and wine symbolize His Blood separated from His Body in the Sacrifice on the Cross.
What greater meditation could we have on the Feast of the Precious Blood than that of Jesus’ sacrifice whereby He shed all His Precious Blood for us—once and for all two thousand years ago on the altar of the cross—and today and everyday by supernatural participation right here on the altar at Saint Odilo.