THE FEEDING OF THE FOUR THOUSAND

A MESSAGE FOR THE FEAST OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD

As we celebrate this feast of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus, we should not neglect today’s proper Last Gospel.  As always happens when a feastday happens to fall on a Sunday, the Gospel of that particular Sunday is read instead of the usual Last Gospel at Mass.  Today, we read the Gospel of St. Mark and his description of our Lord’s feeding of the four thousand in the desert.

It should always be our endeavor to compare the message contained in these proper last gospels with that of the feastday we are celebrating.  Rarely is the association between the two so close as it is this Sunday.  The image of the multitude of believers following Christ into the wilderness and finding themselves without food, only to be fed by our Lord is reflected precisely in the spiritual nourishment provided by his most Precious Blood.

We who are his people, who have followed him into the apparent wilderness of this post-conciliar world, who find ourselves without the comfort of the Church’s sacraments at our local parishes, and who have had to travel from afar this Sunday to be here today—here we are fed with the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of our living God, really present in our midst. We are fed, by our faithfulness to the truths and liturgy revealed by our Lord himself, with all the graces that flow from that Precious Blood, spilled for us on Calvary, and continued today in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered on our altar.

And when we have partaken of the Bread of Angels, we are left with the seven baskets gathered by the apostles and which represent the seven sacraments.  The Precious Blood of Jesus flows not only through our reception of the divine Eucharist, but through our participation in the other six sacraments of the Church too, always available as they are needed.  It is the first and foremost duty of your pastor to provide you with all these sacraments, and your own duty to demand them of your church.  

If Rome will not give them to you, if your local church’s version of these sacraments is doubtfully valid, or even a mockery of the solemn sacramental rites to which you are entitled, you may demand them here at St. Margaret Mary’s.  These sacraments are your birthright as Catholics, and so long as you remain loyal to the faith of your fathers, you have a right to receive them.  For this, Christ died.  For this, he spilled his last drop of Blood.  We should all revere this sacrifice he made for us, and demandthat Rome restore the graces that flow from the valid, traditional sacraments it was given the noble task of protecting and transmitting to us.