“Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river” (Isaiah 66:12)
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).
