July is the month of the Precious Blood of Christ. St John XXIII, the Pope who called the second Vatican Council, had a great love for the Precious Blood and wrote an apostolic letter encouraging the devotion. Here is a brief quotation for reflection:

“Unlimited is the effectiveness of the God-Man’s Blood – just as unlimited as the love that impelled him to pour it out for us, first at his circumcision eight days after birth, and more profusely later on in his agony in the garden, in his scourging and crowning with thorns, in his climb to Calvary and crucifixion, and finally from out that great wide wound in his side which symbolises the divine Blood cascading down into all the Church’s sacraments. Such surpassing love suggests, nay demands, that everyone reborn in the torrents of that Blood adore it with grateful love.”

(Pope St John XXIII. Apostolic Letter Inde a Primis. 1960)