The Gift of the Blood of Christ

Our participation in a community devoted to the Blood of Christ is calling us to be witnesses of the communion which Jesus established in his own body, with his own blood. As Blessed Maria de Mattias, foundress of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ states, this blood is "sign, expression, measure and pledge" of God's abiding love. "...Every community, if it is to be Christian, must be founded on Christ and live in him, as it listens to the word of God, focuses its prayer on the Eucharist, lives in a communion marked by oneness of heart and soul, and shares according to the needs of its members (cf. Acts 2:42 47)." (John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio)

The Blood of Christ calls us to be a place where the generous Word of God is spoken to those near and those afar, where the Word of God is experienced alive in flesh and blood. This will be the place where we experience being evangelized by the living Word of God present in the people and the culture in which we work. St. Gaspar's Institute was characterized by a ministry of the Word, particularly in Missions and Retreats. "He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called The Word of God." (Rev 19:13)

A devotion to the blood of Christ calls us to gather people, facilitate the experience of community, and encourage and celebrate covenant. "...The early Church experiences her mission as a community task, while acknowledging in her midst certain "special envoys" or "missionaries devoted to the Gentiles," such as Paul and Barnabas." (John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio)

The new covenant in his blood is characterized by a rich and far reaching mission to embrace the world, a strong option for those dis-empowered and not included, a place where those who have been thought of as being unlikely and least, foreign and strange, emerge with dignity, freedom , and their just and right place within church and societal systems and communities. "By your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation.(Rev. 5:9)

The all-embracing nature of the Blood of Christ calls us to celebrate the richness present in a variety of cultures in our community. A spirituality of the Blood of Christ impels us to act against and to resist those situations within our culture, our church, our society, our world that contribute to these experiences of being "afar." We are called to announce clearly and in a variety of ways that the new covenant is fully alive and present to those considered as outsiders. In this way we participate in bringing about "that beautiful order of things which the great Son of God came to establish in his own blood. (Saint Maria de Mattias)"