Blood of Christ, Inebriate Me

I sit in the morning light and pray St Bridget’s prayers. This devotion was recommended by my spiritual director and it speaks to me. My miscarried baby would have been due on St Bridget’s feast day. I remember the blood loss from the miscarriage as I meditate on the blood pouring from Christ’s body in the seven meditations. The anemic weakness I felt from that very early miscarriage had shocked me. I was not able to get to mass as I was so sick from the heavy blood loss. A kind soul brought me the Eucharist two days in a row and it felt like a blood transfusion, I found the strength of body to get back on my feet.

I love meditating on His Blood and muse that this was not always so. I remember the aversion I felt of meditating on Jesus’ passion before I began to practice the Apostolate of Holy Motherhood years ago. Back then I would only say a couple rosaries a week and would sometimes skip Tuesday and Friday because it made me feel sick to think of Jesus’s agony amongst the stresses of young motherhood.

But the Apostolate of Holy Motherhood called for fifteen decade rosaries every day, so I grit my teeth and worked through those Sorrowful Mysteries and began to love them. The Apostolate had also taught me about redemptive suffering, and slowly I awakened to the catharsis of joining my sufferings to Jesus’s cross for the salvation of souls.

I recollect the feeling of splitting my heart open to let His bleeding heart enter mine. To sit down in the pile of His sorrows and submit to them. To kneel in front of the Divine Mercy image and open my mouth to receive the blood and water from His side. To ask to be scooped out, emptied, then filled with His blood.

It reminds me of childbirth, where I must allow myself to suffer, to bleed for the life of my baby and spiritually offer my toil for the life of the world. Minute by minute, I breathe and meditate, I move the baby—eternal soul—down and out, through blood and water into new life.

Jesus said: “When a woman is in travail she has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child is born into the world. So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” John 16

“We have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and loving way he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh.” - Hebrews 10

Soul of Christ, sanctify me.

Body of Christ, save me.

Blood of Christ, inebriate me.

Water from the side of Christ, wash me.

Passion of Christ, strengthen me.

O good Jesus, hear me.

Within Thy wounds hide me.