WITH DYED GARMENTS
Most Prominent Devotions of the Church
DEVOTION
TO THE PASSION
To think of Jesus in His
sufferings is to behold Him in His Blood. From Gethsemane to Calvary He is
covered with the dyed garments from Bosra. We should never have realized the
intense agony of His Sacred Heart in the Garden, if Scripture did not tell us
that his sweat became as blood issuing from every pore of His body. The
principal Bloodsheddings of our Savior are the chief stations of His Passion.
The Precious Blood has set forever in rubrics the love Jesus showed us in His
sufferings. Our Lord Himself does not utter a complaint, but the voice of His
Blood bespeaks the indescribable tortures of His body and the bitter anguish of
His soul. In making the Way of the Cross let us represent our Redeemer to our
mind in the livery of His Passion, all covered with Blood, and this thought
will inflame our heart with greater love and devotion. The bruises and
lacerations of the flesh, the inflame our ignominy and disfigurement of the
Passion, are no longer visible in the glorified body of the Savior, neither can
He suffer after the Resurrection; but all this is commemorated at the holy
sacrifice of the Mass, especially by the separate consecration of the chalice,
at which mention of His death is made. It is, however, the same Blood of the
agony, of the scourging, of the crowning of thorns, of the crucifixion,
although now in a glorified state, that is mystically shed on the altar.
In
this Eucharistic Blood we find the riches of his grace and therefore also the
fruits of our Lord's Sacred Passion. The Precious Blood in
the Sacrament is then a memorial of our Lord’s Passion. This chalice is the New Testament in my blood; this do ye, as often as you shall drink, for the
commemoration of me. For as often as you shall eat this bread, and drink the
chalice, you shall show the death of the Lord until he come.
DEVOTION TO THE HOLY CROSS
The unbeliever
looks upon the Cross as a sign of contradiction, as a symbol of senseless
sorrow and suffering. To him it is merely a gibbet, an object of shame and
scorn devoid of all religious sentiment. But to a Christian, the Cross becomes
the emblem of faith, the test of fellowship with Christ, the banner of victory.
This apparently lifeless tree shorn of branches and foliage is saturated with
divine Blood and endowed with divine power, and is therefore worthy of the
deepest veneration. Darkness and despondency depart from it as it stands in the
glory of the Resurrection. The Crucifix is the image of Him Who overcame the
powers of darkness and opened to us the gates of heaven by redeeming us in His
Blood. It is a tree of life eternal. The Cross was the altar, the holy of
holies, on which Christ poured out His Precious Blood and obtained for us
eternal redemption. Hence the Cross occupies the most prominent place on every
altar, where the same sacrifice of Calvary is renewed and the fruits of the
Cross are daily dispensed in every Catholic Church throughout the world. How
beautiful the chalice appears at elevation containing the vintage of the Cross!
I thirst! exclaimed Christ on the Cross. It was a thirst of love for souls.
Thousands now kneel daily at the foot of the Cross, where they drink eternal
love that is stronger than death from the living fountains of the Savior. At
the hour of death, while holding the Crucifix in our hand, let us try to
remember that, as the priest anoints us with holy oil in the form of a cross,
it is the Blood of Calvary that is wiping away the sins of our senses, making
peace through the blood of his cross, both as to the things that are on earth,
and the things that are in heaven.
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Corpus Domini Procession - Gregory XVI bearing the
Blessed Sacrament in procession
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DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED SACRAMENT
The Precious
Blood was the life of Jesus here on earth. It was the life of His infancy at
Bethlehem and of His childhood in Egypt and Nazareth. It was His life during
the three years of His public ministry. It was the life which He poured out in
His Passion. It was the life of His Resurrection and Ascension and it is the
life of His eternal glory in Heaven. So it is also His Eucharistic life in the
Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. The Precious Blood is the human life of the
Word. Beatitude is the natural life of God; and so joy is the natural life of
the Precious Blood. In truth, is not joy the nearest definition of life that we
can have; for is it not God s first intention in the gift of life? In heaven
and in the Blessed Sacrament the Precious Blood dwells, incomparably glorified
in the veins of Jesus. Its beauty there is wonderful to see, wonderful to think
of. The sight of it in our Lord s translucent Body is an immense gladness to
the Blessed. Earth has no beauty to which we can compare it; yet earth is not
therefore poorer than heaven; for it has this very beauty in the adorable
Sacrament. But it is not only a joy to others. Its own life is an unbroken
jubilee. As it goes and returns to and from the Sacred Heart it is filled with
pulses of the most abounding gladness. It thrills with the exquisite delight of
created life carried to its utmost ecstatic possibility. But over and above
this, there is the undefinable, unimaginable ecstasy of the Hypostatic Union,
which is felt in every particle of that Precious Blood. It throbs with such
pacific tumult of immortal love, as no created life could bear without some miraculous
union with the God-head. The life of the flesh is in the blood and it is the
blood that gives testimony, that is, bears witness to the sacred humanity of
Christ. How often has it not happened in the Church that God made use of blood
on the host or corporal, to convince the doubting of the Real Presence. By
representing to ourselves the Blood of Jesus as pulsating in His arteries, we
realize more vividly that it is not a phantom body, nor the body of Jesus as it
was in the sepulcher, but the living Jesus as He appeared to His Apostles after
the Resurrection that is present in the Eucharist. An appeal to the Prisoner of
Love, reminding Him of the love with which He shed His Blood for us, cannot but
touch the Sacred Heart and bear abundant fruit.
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