A LAMB STANDING AS IT WERE SLAIN
What a grand spectacle in the sight of high heaven, looking down
upon this sinful earth, to see not 250,000 sacrificial lambs and the bloody
doorposts of the Old Law, but Jesus the Son of the living God, a Lamb standing
as it were slain on 250,000 altars every day the world over, pleading with His
Five Wounds for us poor banished children of Eve!
250,000 chalices with Thy Blood, O Lord, the Blood of Gethsemane,
of the Pretorium, of Golgotha, all the Blood poured out in Thy seven effusions! What love, what a bountiful redemption! Copiosa apud eum redemptio!
The Bollandists relate of the virgin, St. Coletta, that
once on a Maundy Thursday, while the celebrant of the Mass, a bishop, was
elevating the sacred Host after the consecration, she began to exclaim: O my God! O merciful Jesus! O ye angels and saints! O Christians and sinners! Do come
and behold this miracle, oh, listen to this intercession! And she continued to
cry aloud until her confessor was called and commanded her to be silent. After
the service the bishop in company with his three priests went to the saint and
asked her to explain the cause of all that disturbance. Coletta replied: When
you raised the Sacred Host at elevation, Rt. Rev. Bishop, I saw dear Jesus in
living reality, covered with fresh and bleeding wounds and affixed to the cross
with nails. At the same time I saw Him, with eyes raised to heaven, pleading
most tenderly: O merciful Father look with favor down upon Thy beloved Son;
behold My sufferings, My wounds, My blood, behold My obedience to Thy will, My
zeal for Thy honor, My pity on unfortunate sinners! All this I offer Thee, that
all sinners may find mercy and grace with Thee and serve Thee in love. O most
holy Father, let not My sufferings endured for them, let not My blood shed for
them, be lost to them; accept My vicarious satisfaction and sanctify them, that
they may be saved and rejoice in Thee with eternal gratitude! The bishop was
deeply moved and said: I believe with my whole soul that Jesus is ever pleading
in the tabernacle as hostia (Victim) in the omnipotence of His utter abasement
and with the compassionate Blood of His Wounds to obtain for us mercy and grace
that we may not spend eternity in hell cursing the Holy Trinity, but praising
it forever in heaven. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all
things to myself. But how wilt Thou draw us, O Lord? Ah, as the
flower is inclined to the sun, as the hart is drawn to the running fountain.
By
the love of Thy Precious Blood leaping out from Thy Sacred Heart on the Cross
and falling in profusion over us in the holy sacrifice of the Mass and flowing
through the channels of Thy sacraments into our souls, thereby softening our
hardened hearts and making our indifferent and drooping spirits revive like a
plant after a refreshing rain. But now in Christ Jesus, you, who some time were
afar off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ. The Blood of
Christ is a magnet that draws souls unto itself and inclines God, the tree of
life, to show us His mercy. St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi. At this stream of
Christ’s Precious Blood, let us weep when we remember our Saviors excessive
love for us, as the Israelites did of old when they remembered Sion near the
rivers of Babylon. Let our right hand be forgotten, if we do not hang up our
work-a-day instruments to make the holy sacrifice of the New Law the beginning
of joy, at least on
the Lord s day. Let my tongue cleave to my jaws, if I sound not Thy praise, O
Lord, in Thy holy temple, where Thou, our King, dost offer worship to Thy
heavenly Father in our behalf. For You are come to mount Sion and to the city
of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the company of many thousands
of angels and to Jesus the mediator of the dew testament, and to the sprinkling
of blood which speaketh better than that of Abel.
It is in the Mass that we come to Jesus the
mediator of the New Testament and to the sprinkling of blood. Here our souls
are sprinkled with the Blood of the Lamb that taketh away the sins of the
world, even as Moses sprinkled the chosen people with the blood of animals and
as the priest sprinkles the people on Sunday with holy water. And this divine
Blood cries to heaven for us during the Mass with as many voices as there are
drops of Blood in the chalice.
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