By the Blood that flowed from thee……

07-21-2024Weekly ReflectionVery Rev. Richard C. Wilson, VF, Pastor

…one of the soldiers opened his side with a spear; and immediately blood and water flowed out. John 19:34

Leon Gautier famously defined Chivalry as “the Christian form of the military profession: the knight is the Christian soldier.” Precisely because the Germanic warrior ethos was Christianised, chivalry was more than a code of martial virtue. As Michael Warren Davis has pointed out, it became, so to speak, the “lay spirituality” of Medieval Europe….

For the founder of the Order of the Knights of Our Lady, Dom Gérard-Marie Lafond, “Like the flaming sword of the Angel at the entrance to Paradise, the sword of chivalry protects Christendom against the intrusions of the profane world. Chivalry is an inner temple and outer fortress.” Here is our key to the mystical dimension of chivalry. Within knightly piety the knight sought to conform his own ‘inner temple’ evermore closely to the inner temple of Our Lord’s Sacred Heart, the source of His love….

As René Guenon wrote, “The heart itself, the vase which contains the blood, is the centre of life and also the centre of the entire being.” It is therefore identifiable with the Holy Grail, the Chalice of the Most Precious Blood, the Holy Eucharist. Indeed, every Eucharistic miracle has seen the visible transformation of the accidents of the Host into heart tissue. Traditionally, the Holy Grail was believed to have held Our Lord’s Most Precious Blood for a second time after the Last Supper, when it was used by St Joseph of Arimathea to catch the blood and water which flowed from Our Lord’s Sacred Heart after it was pierced by the soldier, and later convert, Longinus. Following this first soldier saint, ‘The mystical tradition of chivalry has described the stages of the knightly conversion in the Quest of the Holy Grail, which is none other than the search for God Himself and for the Divine Wisdom concealed in the Heart of Christ’ (Dom Gérard-Marie Lafond)….

When chivalry was born at the beginning of the High Middle Ages, the great Crusader and leader Godfrey of Bouillon (one of the Nine Worthies) took as his heraldic emblem the ‘Jerusalem Cross’ – one large cross with four smaller crosses at each side. These symbolised the Five Wounds, including the central wound in the side of Christ from where sprung the blood and water from His Sacred Heart. For the crusaders embarking on armed pilgrimage to the Holy Land, from where over a third would not return and many more would be rendered scarred and crippled, the Five Wounds of Our Lord and the Passion He endured for our redemption took on a particularly immediate poignancy. The offering of one’s life on the battlefield for Christ and His Church was the ultimate ‘priestly’ action of the layman. “The good knight offered his immolation for the glorification of the Church, the spreading of the Faith, and the common good of the temporal sphere” (Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira). It is therefore supremely fitting that the Sacred Heart, the radiant manifestation of God’s love, should have a central place in the knights’ spirituality. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”… Quotes taken from https://onepeterfive.com/the-sacred-heart-the-most-preciousblood-and-mystical-chivalry/

The Nine Worthies are nine historical, scriptural, and legendary men of distinction who personify the ideals of chivalry established in the Middle Ages, whose lives were deemed a valuable study for aspirants to chivalric status. The Nine Worthies include three pagans (Hector, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar), three Jews (Joshua, David and Judas Maccabeus) three Christians (King Arthur, Charlemagne and Godfrey of Bouillon) The importance of blood in the world of medicine today for health and vitality has more and more increased as any visit to the doctor tells us. We await the doctor’s report on our “bloodwork.” It truly is the life source. That being the case how important must the Blood of God Made Flesh be for enduring life in our relationship with God!

BLOOD: the word for “blood” (or related words) occurs more than four hundred times in the Bible. In the Law, blood is “the life of the flesh,” and the blood of sacrifices is what makes atonement, “by reason of the life” (Lev 17: 11). Because of its sacredness, the Old Testament prohibited consuming blood (Gen 9: 4; Lev 7: 26; Deut 12: 16; cf. Acts 15: 20, 29). The great importance of blood is visible in its role in the sacrificial ritual (Lev 3: 2– 4, 8– 10, 13– 15). In ritual sacrifice, blood was sprinkled on the sides of the altar (Lev 1: 5) or sprinkled before the sanctuary (Lev 4: 6), or smeared on the horns of the altar (Lev 4: 7, 25). On the Day of Atonement…, blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat of the ark. The covenant of the Law was sealed in blood (Exod 24: 6) to signify the kinship bond that the covenant established between the Lord and Israel. In the New Testament, the blood of Jesus Christ takes the role of the blood of the sacrificial victim in the OT. Like the blood of the sacrifices, the blood of Christ was shed for the remission of sins (Matt 26: 28). Scott Hahn, Bible Dictionary

Unlimited is the effectiveness of the God-Man’s Blood — just as unlimited as the love that impelled him to pour it out for us, first at his circumcision eight days after birth, and more profusely later on in his agony in the garden, in his scourging and crowning with thorns, in his climb to Calvary and crucifixion, and finally from out that great wide wound in his side which symbolizes the divine Blood cascading down into all the Church’s sacraments. Such surpassing love suggests, nay demands, that everyone reborn in the torrents of that Blood adore it with grateful love. The Blood of the new and eternal covenant especially deserves this worship of latria (latria is the worship given to God alone) when it is elevated during the sacrifice of the Mass. But such worship achieves its normal fulfillment in sacramental communion with the same Blood, indissolubly united with Christ’s eucharistic Body.

In intimate association with the celebrant the faithful can then truly make his sentiments at communion their own: “I will take the chalice of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord. . . The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve my soul for everlasting life. Amen.” Thus as often as they come worthily to this holy table they will receive more abundant fruits of the redemption and resurrection and eternal life won for all men by the Blood Christ shed “through the Holy Spirit.”Nourished by his Body and Blood, sharing the divine strength that has sustained countless martyrs, they will stand up to the slings and arrows of each day’s fortunes — even if need be to martyrdom itself for the sake of Christian virtue and the kingdom of God. Theirs will be the experience of that burning love which made St. John Chrysostom cry out:

Let us, then, come back from that table like lions breathing out fire, thus becoming terrifying to the Devil, and remaining mindful of our Head and of the love he has shown for us. . . This Blood, when worthily received, drives away demons and puts them at a distance from us, and even summons to us angels and the Lord of angels. . . This Blood, poured out in abundance, has washed the whole world clean. . . This is the price of the world; by it Christ purchased the Church… This thought will check in us unruly passions. How long, in truth, shall we be attached to present things? How long shall we remain asleep? How long shall we not take thought for our own salvation? Let us remember what privileges God has bestowed on us, let us give thanks, let us glorify him, not only by faith, but also by our very works. If only Christians would reflect more frequently on the fatherly warning of the first pope: “Look anxiously, then, to the ordering of your lives while your stay on earth lasts.

You know well enough that your ransom was not paid in earthly currency, silver or gold; it was paid in the precious blood of Christ; no lamb was ever so pure, so spotless a victim.”If only they would lend a more eager ear to the apostle of the Gentiles: “A great price was paid to ransom you; glorify God by making your bodies the shrines of his presence.” Their upright lives would then be the shining example they ought to be; Christ’s Church would far more effectively fulfill its mission to men. God wants all men to be saved, for he has willed that they should all be ransomed by the Blood of his only-begotten Son; he calls them all to be members of the one Mystical Body whose head is Christ. If only men would be more responsive to these promptings of his grace, how much the bonds of brotherly love among individuals and peoples and nations would be strengthened. Life in society would be so much more peaceable, so much worthier of God and the human nature created in his image and likeness.

This is the sublime vocation that St. Paul urged Jewish converts to fix their minds on when tempted to nostalgia for what was only a weak figure and prelude of the new covenant: “The scene of your approach now is mount Sion, is the heavenly Jerusalem, city of the living God; here are gathered thousands upon thousands of angels, here is the assembly of those first-born sons whose names are written in heaven, here is God sitting in judgment on all men, here are the spirits of just men, now made perfect; here is Jesus, the spokesman of the new covenant, and the sprinkling of his blood, which has better things to say than Abel’s had.” On Promoting Devotion to the Most Precious Blood Pope John XXIII – 1960 All bold-print added