On the Precious Blood of Jesus, the Price of Our Salvation

The Catholic Church dedicates the month of July to the Precious Blood of Jesus. St. Peter the Apostle reminds us that while we were yet dead in our sins, we were graciously redeemed by the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ Our Lord, the Lamb of God: “Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, as gold or silver, from your vain conversation of the tradition of your fathers: But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb unspotted and undefiled” (1 Pet. 1:18–19). St. Paul tells us we are not our own any longer, having been purchased at such an immeasurable price, “For you are bought with a great price. Glorify and bear God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:20).

A costly price! An infinite price! The price of our salvation! May we never forget what we have cost Our Lord Jesus — the shedding of every last drop of His Precious Blood, from His wounded hands and feet, to His pierced Sacred Heart, all poured out because of His Infinite Love for us. The thought will lead us to true contrition for our sins and desire to make satisfaction for them.

Offering the Precious Blood to the Eternal Father

A simple way to go on making super-abundant satisfaction for our sins and the ongoing sins of all the world is to offer up the Precious Blood of Jesus to the Eternal Father. In the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the priest of Christ does this sacramentally, offering up the Lord’s True Body and Precious Blood as a propitiatory sacrifice. But we can do it spiritually, uniting our offering to the priest’s.

Many of the saints highly recommend spiritual offerings of the Precious Blood:

One of the best means of participating in the graces and blessings of the Precious Blood is to offer It to the Eternal Father. “An offering,” says Father Faber, is “more than a prayer.” In prayer, we are the recipients, but when we make an offering, God vouchsafes to accept something from us. St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi, when in ecstasy, once exclaimed: “Every time a creature offers up the Blood by which he was redeemed, he offers a gift of infinite worth, which can be equaled by no other.” God revealed the practice of making this offering to this Saintly Carmelite nun when He complained to her that so little effort is made in this world to disarm His Divine justice against sinners. Acting upon this admonition, she daily offered the Precious Blood fifty times for the living and the dead. She did this with so much fervor that God showed her on different occasions the numerous souls who had thereby been converted or delivered from Purgatory.

Fr. Faber writes:

Every doctrine in theology is a call to the Precious Blood. Every ceremony in the Church tells of it. Every sermon that is preached is an exhortation to the use of it. Every Sacrament is a communication of it. Every supernatural act is a growth of it. Every thing that is holy on the earth is either leaf, bud, blossom, or fruit of the Blood of Jesus. To its fountains, God calls the sinner, that he may be lightened of his burdens. There is no remission for him in anything else. Only there is his lost sonship to be found. But the Saints are no less called by God to these invigorating streams. It is out of the Precious Blood that men draw martyrdoms, vocations, celibacies, austerities, heroic charities, and all the magnificent graces of high sanctity. The secret nourishment of prayer is from those fountains. They purge the eye for sublime contemplations. They kindle the inward fires of self-sacrificing love. They bear a man safely, and even impetuously, over the seeming impossibilities of perseverance. It is by the Blood of Jesus that the soul becomes ever more and more radiant. It is the secret source of all mystical transformations of the soul into the likeness of its Crucified Spouse.

In our evil days, we see so much wickedness in the world: from instigated burning, looting, and murdering to abortion and sodomy and Marxism and so much else. Evil seems to be triumphant everywhere and growing strong. Can we not fight back and overcome these sins? Yes, we can, but only if we make use of spiritual weapons.

A key weapon is the Precious Blood. The Precious Blood is truly an infinite fountain that never runs dry. The old Raccolta prescribed this prayer:

Precious Blood Offering: ETERNAL Father, I offer Thee the most Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, in satisfaction for my sins, in supplication for the holy souls in Purgatory and for the needs of Holy Church [,especially for the soul of (Name)]. (Number 188)

Following the example of St. Mary Magdalene, we should say such prayers 50 or more times daily. Nothing prevents us from saying it 100 or 500 or even 1,000 times a day.

Another form of prayer recommended by the saints is to beseech Our Loving Lady, immaculate in every perfection, to offer the Precious Blood of Jesus for us, on account of our unworthiness to offer it, and conscious of her sinless perfection and immaculate worthiness.

That prayer can take this form:

Marian Offering of the Precious Blood

IMMACULATE Heart of Mary, do thou offer to the Eternal Father the Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, for the conversion of sinners, especially [Name].

These are short, simple, and powerful prayers we ought to make ample use of in our spiritual arsenal. As St. Paul reminds us in Ephesians 6, our fight is not with flesh and blood, but against the spirits of wickedness in high places. Now, no human weapon can disarm these evil spirits, but the Precious Blood of Jesus always has and easily will, if only we make abundant use of it: “And take unto you the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit (which is the word of God). By all prayer and supplication praying at all times in the spirit; and in the same watching with all instance and supplication for all the saints” (Eph 6:17–18).

There are billions of sins committed every day. If Catholic prayer warriors desire that the cumulative prayers of the Church be more powerful in drawing down graces from God’s Merciful Heart than the cumulative sins of the world are in drawing down chastisements from the just hand of Almighty God, we need an army of Catholic Christians, in unison with the Sacrifice of the Holy Mass offered by the priests, to perpetually offer spiritually from dawn to dusk the Precious Blood of Jesus to the Eternal Father.

At each offering, the day of the Church’s victory grows closer. At each offering, the power of Satan over hearts, and the world is diminished. At each offering, the sanctification of souls advances. At each offering, the conversion of souls to Christ and His Church is effected. Priceless graces from the Precious Blood! Because the price offered to God is so great, there is nothing that God can refuse to It! God Himself has willed it so, in instituting His New Covenant with His own Precious Blood. As Scripture teaches us, we must pray with faith and with perseverance.

Every time the Precious Blood of Jesus is invoked and offered, the angels rejoice. The souls in Purgatory are delivered. The saints who see in the light of the Beatific Vision all the wondrous effects of the Precious Blood are in rapture.

When we desire to obtain or “purchase” great graces, we must “offer” something of correspondingly great price and value. That offering is the Precious Blood.

We conclude with a final excerpt from Devotion for the Dying:

At another time when St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi was in ecstasy, she saw all the holy patrons of the city of Florence [accompanied by innumerable other saints], before the throne of God interceding for sinners. Their petitions, however, remained unanswered. Then the guardian Angels of the poor sinners approached, but their prayers likewise remained unheard. Next came the multitudes of the blessed to make intercession for the guilty souls. While imploring God’s mercy, they were intent at the same time upon offering to the Eternal Father the Precious Blood, and on account of the merits of the Divine Blood, their petitions were granted. Ought not these examples incite us to offer the Precious Blood frequently during the day?