Great commotion in Italy and the Catholic world was caused by a miracle that occurred several years ago in Asti, a small town near Turin. In a local shelter dedicated to St. Clare, there lived a poor peasant woman, Maria Tartaglino, who had been bedridden for 30 years. Her only comfort was a small crucifix placed on a table beside her bed. On August 11, 1933, Tartaglino heard these words from the lips of Christ: “Behold, daughter, to what state sacrileges have brought me, renewing my passion.” After these words, fresh blood gushed from the side of Christ; blood also flowed abundantly from the hands and feet of the Savior and did not vanish but, like real blood, soon coagulated. This extraordinary phenomenon repeated itself in the presence of 11 other people and occurred again on September 27 of the same year.
The local bishop ordered a thorough investigation of this event. All witnesses were questioned under oath, and the cross, along with the blood that had gushed forth, was subjected to the most meticulous scientific examination by various scholars at the University of Turin. Both the proceedings in the bishop’s court and the experimental scientific investigations proved beyond any doubt that it was real blood and that it had miraculously flowed from the figure of Christ. Following this verdict, on February 12, 1934, the bishop officially confirmed the authenticity of the miracle, and the crucifix with traces of blood can now be viewed in the Church of St. Joseph in Asti. By a strange coincidence, or rather by divine providence, this miracle occurred in 1933, the Jubilee Year of Redemption, in which the Catholic Church celebrated the 1900th anniversary of the redemption of the human race. If we may venture to speculate, the purpose of this miracle was likely to strengthen and revive in the Christian world devotion to the priceless Blood of Christ, by which we were redeemed.
The Most Precious Blood as an Object of Special Devotion
Blood is perhaps an integral component of human nature. Without it, a person can neither live nor act; the loss of a significant amount of it inevitably causes death. Blood sustains the body’s life and thereby enables the soul to function in this earthly life. Without the blood animating the Body of Christ the Lord, He would not be a true human, could not live, act, or suffer as a true human. Just as the Body of Jesus is hypostatically united with the Divine Person of the Word, so too is His Blood, and therefore, like the Body, the Blood of Christ is worthy of divine worship!
The Blood of Christ as the Instrument of Redemption
The Blood of Christ, flowing through His veins and pulsing in His Heart, is simultaneously the instrument of the divine work of Redemption, and this is the second reason for the special devotion to the Most Precious Blood. Every word of the Savior, His prayer, every deed and miracle; whatever Christ felt, did, or suffered was connected with the beating of blood in His Most Sacred Heart. The supreme expression and proof of His love for us, carried to the utmost limits, was His passion and death on the cross, a death caused by the shedding of His blood on the cross until the last drop. The Savior generously and abundantly poured out this blood during His painful passion. Drops of Jesus’ Blood flowed during His agony in Gethsemane; it poured in streams during the scourging, the crowning with thorns, the nailing to the cross, and on the cross, and the last remnants flowed from Jesus’ Heart after His side was pierced by Longinus’ spear.
Through this Most Holy Blood, shed for us on the cross until the last drop, Christ the Lord became, as Scripture repeatedly states in many places, a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the world. His Blood is the price of our redemption, more precious than gold or silver. Through it, we have been redeemed, cleansed, justified, and sanctified: it brings us closer to God, grants victory over Satan, and ensures the possession of peace. The Blood of Christ, flowing through His veins and pulsing in His Heart, is simultaneously the instrument of the divine work of Redemption, and this is the second reason for the special devotion to the Most Precious Blood.
The Priceless Sacrifice of Jesus’ Blood Renewed Now
Whenever the sanctification and salvation of any person is accomplished, it happens through the power and price of Jesus’ sacrifice, meaning that the same Most Precious Blood, which once flowed on the cross for the salvation of the world 20 centuries ago, is “poured out” anew upon us in the present, and this is the third reason for the special devotion to the Blood of the Savior.
Our life is sanctified and elevated to the supernatural order by sanctifying grace and the grace flowing through the seven holy sacraments. The sacraments operate through the power of the Most Precious Blood. The Blood of Christ, shed on the cross, washes us in Holy Baptism from original sin and all guilt, and awakens us to new, supernatural life. In the sacrament of Confirmation, it strengthens us for courage in faith, and in the sacrament of Extreme Unction, it wipes away the remnants of sin and fortifies us in the final battle for the salvation of the soul. In the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, this Blood constitutes a wondrous drink that preserves supernatural life in the soul, multiplies this divine life, and is a pledge of glorious resurrection. When the soul loses sanctifying grace through mortal sin and falls into a state of supernatural death, the Blood of Christ in the sacrament of Penance washes it, cleanses it from guilt, and revives it to life anew. Through this Blood, the mysterious consecration is accomplished, by which, in the sacrament of Holy Orders and the sacrament of Matrimony, Christian spouses receive supernatural power to lead a divine and holy life. The same power of the sacrificial Blood of Christ also operates in the inexhaustible treasury of countless actual graces, through which the Holy Spirit, by the merits of this Blood of Christ—whether through internal enlightenment, stimulation of the will, or stirring of emotions—draws us to good and salvific deeds, helps us resist temptations to evil and sin, encourages repentance, and grants perseverance in God’s grace until death.
All our prayers, good deeds, penances, and acts of mortification owe their meritorious power to this Most Precious Blood; for, being sprinkled with it and immersed in it, they earn for us ever higher degrees of glory in heaven. Finally, whenever a priest, as Christ’s representative, celebrates Holy Mass, the sacrifice of the Son of God on the cross is renewed, a new mysterious shedding of Christ’s Blood in the present, as a propitiatory, atoning, laudatory, thanksgiving, and supplicatory sacrifice.
The Mysterious Power of the Sacrificial Blood of Christ
All of Christianity, the Church, its life and history, its saints, and all its sanctifying and saving activity, is a magnificent and wondrous fruit of the Most Precious Blood. The Church was born from this Blood, this Blood, continually poured out upon the world, preserves the Church so that it does not perish, and it also causes the ever more splendid flourishing of its activity. If Tertullian once rightly said that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians,” then even more so, and to an infinitely greater degree, the sacrificial Blood of Christ is such a seed of Christians. If we rightly honor the blood of martyrs and national heroes who offered their blood in sacrifice, then all the more should we honor the immaculate Blood of this Lamb who takes away the sins of the world.
Devotion to the Most Precious Blood in the Church
To glorify and spread devotion to the Blood of Christ, there have long existed in the Church, endowed with numerous indulgences and graces, various confraternities, along with the Archconfraternity of the Most Precious Blood at the Church of St. Nicholas in Carcere in Rome. Several religious congregations have also dedicated themselves to this same purpose, combined with apostolic and charitable works. The oldest of these is the Knightly Order of the Most Precious Blood, founded in Mantua in 1608 to defend religion, country, and the pope, as well as the Cistercian Order of the Most Precious Blood, founded in 1653. In more recent times, Blessed Gaspar del Bufalo (†1837) founded in 1815 the secular Congregation of Missionary Priests of the Most Precious Blood, and in 1834, with the help of Blessed Maria de Mattias (†1866), the female Congregation of the Most Holy Adorers of the Precious Blood, which recently established itself in Poland, in Bolesław (Lower Silesia). Additionally, one can mention the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood, founded in 1823 in Switzerland, the Congregation of the Daughters of the Most Precious Blood, founded in 1862 in the Netherlands, the Augustinians of the Most Precious Blood, founded in 1823 in Arras, the Missionary Sisters of the Most Precious Blood, founded in 1885 for African missions, and the Chinese Sisters of the Most Precious Blood, founded in 1861 in Hong Kong.
This year marks exactly 100 years since Pope Pius IX, by a decree of August 10, 1849, established for the entire Church the liturgical feast of the Most Precious Blood as a votive offering of thanksgiving for the liberation of Rome, from which he had been driven by the revolutionary disturbances of 1848 and 1849. This feast, with a double rite of the second class, was elevated by Pius XI in the Jubilee Year of 1933/34 to a feast of the first class and designated for July 1 or the first Sunday of July.
To commemorate the centennial of the establishment of a separate liturgical feast of the Most Precious Blood of Christ, let us strive with living faith to draw from the inexhaustible springs of Christ’s merits, flowing from the wounds of the Savior along with the priceless Blood of God-Man, shed for us during His bitter passion. Let us draw from them by devoutly attending, if possible, daily Holy Mass and receiving Holy Communion during it.
Fr. Eugeniusz Chomrański, SJ, “Messenger of the Sacred Heart” – Devotion to the Most Precious Blood of Christ, July 1949
Catholic during the Great Apostasy 
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