Blood of Christ, Eucharistic Food and Purification of Souls, Save Us!

It was no necessity which drove God to the redemption of the world by the Precious Blood. He might have redeemed it in unnumbered other ways. There is no limit to His power, no exhaustion of His wisdom. He might have reconciled the forgiveness of sin with his stainless sanctity by many inventions of which neither we nor the angels can so much as dream.

There are vastnesses in Him who is incomprehensible, of the existence of which we have no suspicion. He could have saved us without Jesus, according to the absoluteness of His power. All salvation must be dear: yet who can dream of a salvation which should seem at once so worthy of God and so endearing to man as our present salvation through Jesus Christ?

Even then our dearest Lord need not have shed His Blood. There was no compulsion in the Blood-shedding. One tear of His, one momentary sigh, one uplifted look to His Father’s throne, would have been sufficient, if the Three Divine Persons had so pleased.

The shedding of His Blood was part of the freedom of His love. It was, in some mysterious reality, the way of redemption most worthy of His blessed majesty, and also the way most likely to provoke the love of men.

How often has God taken the ways of our hearts as the measure of His own ways! How often does He let His glory and our love seem to be different things, and then leave Himself and go after us!