July is the month dedicated to the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord, and although the feast was not officially established until the pontificate of Pius IX, in the year 1849, devotion to the Precious Blood can be traced back to the earliest days of Christianity. The mystery of the piercing of Christ’s side and the pouring out of blood and water have been subject to contemplation since the days of the Church Fathers, who believed that the Church herself was born from this outpouring of Christ’s love. It is, indeed, a mystery, for we know from the Gospels that when His side was pierced with a spear by the man who would one day be known as St. Longinus, He had already given up His spirit to the Father. It was not a necessary thing, with regard to the work of His executioners, that His Heart be pierced; the work of that day had already been accomplished, which is why when the soldiers found Him already dead, they did not break His legs to hasten the end. But so that it might be said that He gave up everything for us, He spared not even the smallest drop of blood; and even after the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane caused Him to sweat blood, and the scourging at the pillar tore His flesh, the fulfillment of His divine plan did not withhold from us or from our salvation the least droplet of blood. And so, from His side flowed out the blood and water that, even now, two thousand years later, we contemplate when we gaze upon the image of His Divine Mercy.

In his book The Precious Blood: The Price of Our Salvation, Father Faber elaborates on what he calls the “prodigality” of Christ. He explains that even considering that there have been millions and millions of people who have lived and died, and perhaps millions and millions more who will live and die, and that each of those people has committed innumerable sins, it is nevertheless true that “one drop of the thousands of drops of the Precious Blood in the glorified Body of Christ” would have been enough to atone for the innumerable sins of those innumerable “fallen creatures” (33). The worth of a single drop, he continues, is “simply infinite,” and yet He allowed for His own Blood to be spilled excessively and extravagantly, “in seeming careless prodigality upon the pavement of the treacherous city” (33; 32). This “prodigality,” he argues, is unique in context of His life; Our Lord speaks relatively little in the Gospels, and His ministry encompasses three brief years. He accomplishes many miracles, yes, but Our Lord even says in the Gospels that “His saints after Him should work greater miracles than His” (40). But, as Father Faber emphatically argues, in the shedding of His Most Precious Blood, He is “spendthrift, prodigal, wasteful,” pouring out His Blood in the scourging, in the crowning of thorns, and in the nailing of hands and feet. So desirous was He that not even the slightest drop be spared, that  Our Lord willed that He might continue to bleed even after His death, “as if He could not rest until the last drop had been poured out for the creatures whom He so incomprehensibly loved” (40).

It has been echoed by many that if Christ had to repeat His passion in its entirety for one person alone—for you—He would. The same God who shed every drop of blood to redeem all mankind when one drop alone would have sufficed would shed every drop again—for you. Such a love as this is a mystery too large for us to grasp, but this much is true: Our Lord loves each of us with an extravagance that we cannot fathom, and all He asks in return is that we offer Him our own pitiful little hearts, our own meager efforts, and that we love Him in return. Pray that you may learn to love Him like Christ loves you; be prodigious in your love.