He Did This for Us:

A Lenten Meditation

By Rev. Winfrid W. Herbst, S.D.S.

The

Thefestival of Corpus Christi (the Body of Christ) has its counterpart in the Feast of the Precious Blood, celebrated on July the first. This feast ever calls to mind the Savior’s mighty generosity. Gladly, freely, willingly He paid the price of my ransom—His Precious Blood.

I gaze down through the dim obscurity of the ages that passed before He came to save me. There, in type and figure and prophecy, I see the Blood of the most just One shed for me—the glorious proof of His infinite love for me.

Abel, a just man and pleasing to God, was slain by his brother Cain: Christ the all-holy was cruelly put to death by His brethren. The sacrifices of Noe [sic], Abraham, and other patriarchs were acceptable to God: but they were merely foreshadowings, figures, types of the one great Sacrifice on Calvary's heights.

It was the blood of a lamb put on the door-posts of the Israelites in the days of Moses that saved their first-born from the sword of the destroying angel: it was the Blood of the Lamb of God that saved His people from their sins.

"Without the shedding of blood there is no remission" of sins. This was continually exemplified by the streams of blood that flowed in the endless sacrifices of the Old Law: those streams prefigured the Blood of the victim, Who,

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See

Lenten Meditation/

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Caravaggio's

The Crowning With Thorns,

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He Did This for Us:

A Lenten Meditation

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dying once and shedding every drop of His Precious Blood, was to redeem all generations of men. God was not satisfied with the sacrifices of the Old Testament. He wanted that pure oblation of priceless value to which all those others pointed. "Sacrifice and oblation Thou didst not desire...Burnt offering and sin offering Thou didst not require: then said I, 'Behold I come.'" (Ps. 39:7, 8.) And He came, "to the sprinkling of Blood, which speaketh better than that of Abel." (Heb. 12:24.) Indeed, the Savior was "the Lamb which was slain from the beginning of the world." (Apoc. 13:8.) His Blood was efficacious even before it was shed on Calvary. The just, from the beginning of the world, felt its efficacy and were saved by it.

The Savior's one Sacrifice was allavailing, reality taking the place of all types and figures, surpassing them infinitely, superseding them forever. Of those figures the Lord has said, "The earth is mine and the fullness thereof.

Shall I eat the flesh of bullocks? Or shall I drink the blood of goats?" (Ps. 49:12, 13.) But of Jesus, the Lamb of God, He declared, "This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased." (Matt. 3:17.) All this makes me thoughtful. It makes me reflect upon the words of St.

Peter, "You were not redeemed with corruptible things, as gold or silver...

But with the Precious Blood of Christ, as of a Lamb unspotted and undefiled." (1Peter 1:18, 19.) It makes me think of Christ's unbounded generosity. It makes me think of His infinite love.

His infinite love! Why, the proof of it is written large with His Precious Blood.

I see the first drops of that Blood shed in the circumcision. I see it pressed through the pores of His skin and cover His trembling body in the agony in the garden. I see it drawn out and spattered about by the hissing, burning lashes of the soldiers in the scourging at the pillar. I see it spurt from His head and slowly trickle down when the crown of thorns is driven in. I see it flow from His shoulder bruised and jagged by the heavy cross.

I see it ooze from His knees and limbs when He falls beneath that cross. I see it gush from His hands and feet when the merciless nails are driven through.

And when He is already dead I see the last drops of that Blood drawn from His Sacred Heart by the spear plunged into His side.

That some Precious Blood, shed in the Passion and afterwards mysteriously gathered up, is daily offered for me in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Daily I receive it in the sacrificial-banquet of Holy Communion. In heaven it ever pleads for me, obtaining for me countless graces and blessings I must imitate the Savior’s generosity and return His love. How can I best do it today? v

[Excerpt from THE DIVINE SAVIOR: A Pictorial Life of Christ originally published in 1932 by Benziger Brothers. It is currently out of print.]