Stream of mercy: the forgotten feast of the Most Precious Blood

By David G. Bonagura, Jr. ( bio - articles - email ) | Jul 01, 2025

For just over 100 years, beginning in 1849, the universal Church celebrated the feast of the Most Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in July. Then it fell victim of a strange irony: the post-Vatican II commission that was established for revising the liturgy, while seeking to implement Sacrosanctum Concilium 55 that admitted the faithful to receive the precious Blood of Christ at certain Masses, eliminated the feast of the Most Precious Blood, which had a double first-class rank. Christ’s precious Blood apparently could be received but not celebrated, shared but not exalted.

This feast, it seems, is a casualty of the misguided theology that drove a wedge between Eucharistic practice and Eucharistic worship, between the Mass and adoration. “The Eucharist is for eating, not for looking,” went the refrain. Eucharistic adoration and holy hours, once mainstays of Catholic devotion, were summarily abandoned. Pope Benedict XVI, in his mild way, rebuked this error in Sacramentum Caritatis 66: “[E]ucharistic adoration is simply the natural consequence of the eucharistic celebration, which is itself the Church’s supreme act of adoration…. The act of adoration outside Mass prolongs and intensifies all that takes place during the liturgical celebration itself.”

Given that the Church has added and subtracted feasts over the centuries, including, most recently, Pope Francis’s addition of Word of God Sunday and Mary, Mother of the Church, it would not be difficult for the Church to restore the feast of the Most Precious Blood to its prior date of July 1. But there is no reason for the faithful to wait for a restoration to receive the graces, for devotion to Christ’s precious Blood, built on Scripture and centuries of theology, already exists and can nourish our souls today.

From beginning to end, God’s covenants have been sealed with blood. The sign of the first, with Abraham, was circumcision: to be brought into God’s family meant the shedding of human blood. Later, God’s first act of redemption liberated Israel from slavery through the blood of a lamb: “The blood shall be a sign for you, upon the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt” (Ex 12:13).

The new covenant in Christ elevates God’s relationship with human beings. Christ first shed His blood eight days after His birth when He was circumcised and given the name Jesus, which means “God saves.” By submitting to the old law, the infant Jesus foreshadowed the salvific nature of His blood that consummated the new law inaugurated with His sacrificial death. Lest we miss the point, Jesus interpreted His self-sacrifice for us at the last supper: “Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt 26:27-28).

Then even more than now, blood symbolized life. The strange detail emphasized in John’s crucifixion account only makes sense in this light: “But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth—that you also may believe” (John 19:34-35). That is, Jesus truly died, He gave every ounce of His life so that we may have new life in Him.

The New Testament writers and Church Fathers saw rich symbolism in the pierced side of Christ, from which they perceived the birth of the Church and the two foundational sacraments, baptism and the Eucharist. A core element of Catholic devotional life also flowed from the pierced side, for which the Letter to the Hebrews, in comparing the role of blood in sacrifice under the old law to the new, charts the course: “[U]nder the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22).

Forgiveness of sins comes through the price of Christ’s blood—here Christians forever meditate and beg for salvation. Those in Heaven, the Book of Revelation announces, “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (7:14). St. Augustine, commenting on the Gospel of John four-hundred years later, made the same observation: “That Blood which was shed there was shed for the remission of sins, that Water is the water that fills the cup of salvation. Therein are we washed, and thereof do we drink.”

In modern times this awareness has developed into two prominent devotions. One is the feast of the Most Precious Blood, now sidelined. The other is the Divine Mercy Chaplet, which rose to prominence as the former feast was suppressed. Its refrain, “O blood and water which gushed forth from the heart of Jesus as a font of mercy for us, I trust in you,” is modern in the best sense: it brings the person, typically the starting point for contemporary thought, into union with Christ giving Himself for us.

Certainly, Catholics can add devotion to the Most Precious Blood of Christ to their prayer repertoire to wade more deeply into the mystery of salvation. A short litany, promulgated by Pope St. John XXIII, hones our understanding of the blood of Christ’s central task through the refrain: “Blood of Christ, save us.” As with other litanies, this one displays this task’s multiple facets with its invocations, including its ties to Jesus’ specific sufferings, the eternal covenant, the Eucharist, forgiveness, eternal life, and the strength it provides us. My favorite four for meditation: “Blood of Christ, stream of mercy; solace in sorrow; hope of the penitent; pledge of eternal life.”

Then there is the beautiful collect of the suppressed feast that also concludes the litany: “Almighty, eternal God, Who made thy only-begotten Son the Redeemer of the world, and willed to be reconciled by His Blood, grant us, we beseech thee, so to worship in this sacred rite the price of our salvation, and to be so protected by its power against the evils of the present life on earth, that we may enjoy its everlasting fruit in heaven.”

To the impoverishment of the Church, the same teachers who discouraged Eucharistic adoration also denigrated private devotions as somehow contrary to the communal celebration of the liturgy. What Benedict XVI taught about the relationship of Eucharistic celebration to adoration applies for private devotion and the Mass. In fact, what better way to prepare for and prolong the celebration of the Eucharist than by praying the litany of the Most Precious Blood, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, or the Scriptures expressing how we are made white in Christ’s blood.

We need not wait for a formal restoration of the feast for the Most Precious Blood of Christ to nourish our souls right here and right now. The resources await us.

David G. Bonagura, Jr. is an adjunct professor at St. Joseph’s Seminary and Catholic International University. He is the author of 100 Tough Questions for Catholics: Common Obstacles to Faith Today, and the translator of Jerome”s Tears: Letters to Friends in Mourning. He serves as the religion editor of The University Bookman, a review of books founded in 1960 by Russell Kirk. See full bio.

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