Thought for the Day – 8 July – Meditations with Fr Richard Frederick Clarke SJ (1839-1900)
From “The Devout Year”
By Fr Richard Frederick Clarke SJ (1839-1900)
The Name of the Precious Blood of Jesus
+1. Why is the blood of Jesus called the Precious Blood?
Because It was the Blood of God Himself, veiled under the form of Man and, therefore, every Drop of It, as It flowed through His Sacred Veins deserved our supreme homage as being united to His Divinity!
Hence we can adore the Precious Blood as we adore the Sacred
Heart of Jesus and all else which belongs to the Sacred Humanity, with the supreme homage which belongs to God alone.
+2. We also term It, the Precious Blood, inasmuch as It was the Blood of One Who was not only full of grace but was Himself the Source of all grace, so the grace which dwelt with Him was Infinite and the grace which manifested itself through the veil of Flesh, had no bounds or limits, save those which the mere fact of His Human Nature carried with It.
If, therefore, the blood of the Saints is counted as most precious, if we treasure a piece of cloth stained with their blood, how much more precious, beyond all price,is the Blood of the King of Saints!
+3. The Precious Blood is also precious on account of Its effects. One Drop of It was sufficient, not only to cleanse the world from sin but, to earn all possible graces for all the millions who
have ever lived on earth.
How Infinite then must be its Preciousness!
What has it not done for man!
What has it not done for me!
It has washed me clean and made me pure, in spite of all my sins. O Jesus! give me an ever -increasing devotion to the Precious Blood!
AnaStpaul 