“<em>Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river” (Isaiah 66:12)</em>
In today’s first reading, peace is described as a river, and in this month of July, dedicated to the Precious Blood of Jesus, we can think of the blood that poured from his pierced heart.
Ezechiel had a vision of a river flowing from the side of the Temple that brought life even to the barren waters of the Dead Sea (chapter 47): the Church sees that passage as a foreshadowing of this river of Jesus’s blood.
Our first reading also talks of mothers suckling their children, and St John Chrysostom saw this too as an image of Christ’s blood: “As a woman nourishes her child with her own blood and milk, so does Christ unceasingly nourish with his own blood those to whom he himself has given life” (Catechesis 3, 13-19).
For the Jews, blood was what gave life, and Jesus offers us his blood to share his life with us as God’s little children, even when we are as spiritually lifeless as the Dead Sea. Like a river, his blood has an infinite power to cleanse, so we can constantly wash our souls “white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelations 7:14), especially in Confession.
His blood also makes us into rivers of peace to others: in today’s Gospel we are each called to offer others the peace within us (Luke 10:6), since we carry Jesus’s life and his kingdom within us (Luke 10:9-11).
In a particular way, priests are fountains of peace for others, since their bodies are borrowed by Jesus for his work. In the second reading, St Paul said, “I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (Galatians 6:17), a mysterious grace that some have identified as the stigmata. But all priests experience something similar whenever they celebrate the sacraments: their bodies become instruments of Jesus’ body.
So let’s “pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest” (Luke 10:2), for each new priest is a new channel of the blood of Christ.
<strong><em><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color"><a href="https://thecatholicherald.com/two-sanctuaries-one-heart/">RELATED: Two sanctuaries, one Heart</a></mark></em></strong>
<em>Photo: 'The Crucifixion' by Leon Bonnat.</em>
<em>Fr David Howell is an assistant priest at St Bede’s in Clapham Park. His previous studies include canon law in Rome, Classics at Oxford and a licence in Patristics at the Augustinianum Institute in Rome. He is a regular contributor to the </em>Catholic Herald<em>; his other articles can be accessed <strong><a href="https://thecatholicherald.com/author/frdavidhowell/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">here</mark></a></strong>.</em>
