Wednesday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

 Lectionary: 349

Realize that you were ransomed from your futile conduct,
handed on by your ancestors,
not with perishable things like silver or gold
but with the precious Blood of Christ
as of a spotless unblemished Lamb.

Beginning with the Church's efforts to restore the Mass without the unnecessary embellishments of the Traditional Latin Mass, many Catholic churches routinely offer the Precious Blood of Jesus to their weekday and Sunday congregations. 

But that astonishing development was first offered in the late 1970's without much fanfare, and so many people routinely ignore it. It didn't seem very important; there was already enough unrest and suspicion in the Church toward the changes that had occurred and were not yet fully integrated. Receiving Communion from the chalice has been widely regarded as an unnecessary option, and tainted by a hint of contamination with germs. (Ugh!) Nor do homilists pay much attention to Saint Peter's expression, "the precious Blood of Christ as of a spotless unblemished Lamb." 

I began to receive from the chalice as a seminarian in the late 1960's, and became more aware of its significance when I began my theological studies in 1971. I remember a "practice homily" in a class in which I was overcome with dread and fear, and was practically inarticulate. I don't know what I said but the kind professor understood my dilemma.

I have several mixed impressions about the practice: 

• some people travel miles to a distant parish for the privilege of receiving the Precious Blood;
• recovering alcoholics should not receive from the cup unless they are absolutely convinced of the Church's teaching: "It is not wine; it is the Precious Blood of Jesus." If they suspect their own motives or fear the triggers associated with the taste and smell of wine, they should not;
• some patients in the VA hospital, hearing that I drink no alcohol, asked me about "the wine at Mass." They said no more when I replied, "It is the Precious Blood of Jesus!" 
• blood was more familiar to most generation of the human race than it is today. Grocery shoppers rarely see blood in their transparent packs of beef, pork, chicken, or fish. They consider the sight and thought of blood repulsive; 
• The word blood appears 96 times in the New Testament, and 401 times in the entire Bible. It is too important to be ignored;
• there is in our Roman Missal a Votive Mass of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
• I have sometimes that Mass prayers on a weekday, when the readings suggested it. 
• The Gospels are remarkably discreet about the details of the Lord's passion. Saint Mark says simply, "They crucified him." Only Saint John mentions blood when a lance pierced the Lord's body after he died.
• The Evangelists were more fascinated by other aspects; 
• especially by the Lord's meekness as he was tried, tormented, crucified, and died. 
• Mark accentuates the Lord's abandonment by his disciples, family, religious and civil authorities. Even God, whom he calls Eloi, seems to have deserted him. 
• However, during the Middle Ages, when the Black Death overcame Europe, Christians were fascinated with bloodier, violent images of his suffering and death. See Hieronymous Bosch. 
• The word bloody has been considered offensive in England, because it alluded to the Passion of the Lord, on the one hand; and to the "unbloody sacrifice of the Mass," on the other. 
• finally, I find a strange irony -- perhap this was God's intention all along -- in the Old Testament proscription against consuming the blood of any animal. Was Jesus thinking of that very serious law when he commanded his disciples to drink his blood? 

The invitation to consume the Lord's Precious Blood during the Mass demands our attention and profound reverence. We should do it, as Saint Paul,

Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup. (1 Cor:11:27)

Receiving the Body or the Blood of the Eucharist indicates our readiness to die as thousands of our martyrs have died, to ourselves and with the Lord.