Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk 
10th July 2016

The Precious Blood - God's Greatness in our Midst
by Fr. Frederick Faber

The Precious Blood ministers to all the perfections of God. It is the one grand satisfaction of His justice. It is one of the most excellent inventions of His wisdom. It is the principal feeder of His glory. It is the repose of His purity. It is the delight of His mercy. It is the participation of His power. It is the display of His magnificence. It is the covenant of His patience. It is the reparation of His honour. It is the tranquillity of His anger. It is the imitation of His fruitfulness. It is the adornment of His sanctity. It is the expression of His love. But, above all, it ministers to the dominion of God. It is a conqueror and conquers for Him. It invades the kingdom of darkness, and sweeps whole regions with its glorious light. It humbles the rebellious, and brings home the exiles, and reclaims the aliens. It pacifies; it builds up; it gives laws; it restores old things; it inaugurates new things. It grants amnesties; and dispenses pardons; and it wonderfully administers the kingdom it has wonderfully reconquered. It is the crown, the sceptre, and the throne of God's invisible dominion.

I said its rights were founded in its relation to the life of God; and its relation has to do especially with that which is kingly and paternal in the character of the Creator. The dominion of God is part of His invisible beauty; but the Precious Blood is the scarlet mantle of His eternal royalty. God became a King by becoming a Creator. It was thus He gained an empire over which His insatiable love might rule. We are obliged to speak of creation as if it were a gain to Him Who has all fullness in Himself. He created because of His perfections, because He was God, because He was the infinitely blessed God that He is. Temporal things came into existence because there were eternal things. Time is a growth of the ungrowing eternity. Nature is very beautiful, whether we think of angelic or of human nature. Created nature is a shadow of the Uncreated Nature, so real and so bright that we cannot think of it without exceeding reverence. Yet God created neither Angels nor men in a state of nature. This is, to my mind, the most wonderful and the most suggestive thing which we know about God.

He would have no reasonable nature, even from the very first, which should not be partaker of His Divine Nature. This is the very meaning of a state of grace. He as it were clung to His creation while He let it go. He would not leave it to breathe for one instant in a merely natural state. The very act of creation was full of the fondness of maternal jealousy. It was, to speak in a human way, as if He feared that it would wander from Him, and that His attractions would be too mighty for the littleness of finite beings. He made it free; yet he embraced it so that it should be next to impossible it should leave Him. He gave it liberty, yet almost overpowered its liberty with caresses the very moment that He gave it. Oh, that Majesty of God, which seems clothed with such worshipful tranquillity in the eternity before creation, how passionate, how yearning, how mother-like, how full of inventions and excesses, it appears in the act of creation!