The Seven Bloodsheddings of Christ
2 min • Digitized on July 20, 2021
From The Precious Blood, page 259
By Fr. Frederick William Faber
There has been some variety in the enumeration of the Seven Bloodsheddings by different holy persons, though the difference has been little more than one of division. The enumeration which we shall follow is the one approved and indulgenced by Pius the Seventh.
The Seven are the Circumcision, the Agony, the Scourging, the Crowning with Thorns, the Way of the Cross, the Crucifixion, and the Piercing of the Sacred Heart.
There is no doubt a divine intention in these particular seven mysteries. We shall find that they illustrate in a most complete and touching manner the spirit of the Precious Blood.
While they are like each other, they are also different. They have that mixture of likeness and of difference, which so often makes up the beauty of divine works.
One of them belongs to the Infancy, and the other six to the Passion. Six of them were sufferings of Jesus, and one was that mute preaching of his love which took place after he was dead.
The first and the last had nothing to do with the redemption of the world; the first because it had no connection with his death, and the last because it only took place after he was already dead.
Of some of the others also, but less certainly, we may say that they did not belong to our redemption.
At all of them our Blessed Lady was present, in spirit, if not in body, and all of them were sorrows to her immaculate heart.
In the number of times that the Blood was shed, in the quantity shed, and in the mysterious manners of its shedding, it is the magnificence of God which is revealing the excesses of his love.
Each Bloodshedding has its own way of touching our hearts, and its own attraction for our devotion. The whole Seven together have also a distinctive unity, and form a complete picture and a definite spirit in our souls.
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