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The Sprinkled Blood That Calls out More Eloquently Than Abel�s

The Sprinkled Blood That Calls out More Eloquently Than Abel�s

from The Moral Reflections on Job by Pope St Gregory the Great

The text goes on fittingly to speak of Christ�s blood: Earth, do not cover over my blood, do not let my cry find a hiding place in you. When man sinned, God had said: Earth you are, and to earth you will return. Earth does not cover over the blood of our Redeemer, for every sinner, as he drinks the blood that is the price of his redemption, offers praise and thanksgiving, and to the best of his power makes that blood known to all around him.
 
Earth has not hidden away his blood, for holy Church has preached in every corner of the world the mystery of its redemption.
 
Notice what follows: Do not let my cry find a hiding place in you. The blood that is drunk, the blood of redemption, is itself the cry of our Redeemer. Paul speaks of the sprinkled blood that calls out more eloquently than Abel�s. Of Abel�s blood Scripture had written: The voice of your brother�s blood cries out to me from the earth. The blood of Jesus calls out more eloquently than Abel�s, for the blood of Abel asked for the death of Cain, the fratricide, while the blood of the Lord has asked for, and obtained, life for his persecutors.
 
If the sacrament of the Lord�s passion is to work its effect in us, we must imitate what we receive and proclaim to mankind what we revere. The cry of the Lord finds a hiding place in us if our lips fail to speak of this, though our hearts believe in it. So that his cry may not lie concealed in us it remains for us all, each in his own measure, to make known to those around us the mystery of our new life in Christ.

from today’s Office of Readings

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4 comments
  • Another random picture book related question: for books you own, what do you do with dust jackets? I feel kind of weird about throwing them away, but my toddler just pulls them off and they wind up all over the floor. It’s hard enough to keep the books put away neatly as it is…

  • Oh Sara, dust jackets are the bane of my existence. Bella made peace with them and is pretty good about keeping them on books or at least putting them back on when she’s done reading. Sophie, on the other hand, pulls them off and tosses them to the floor. (If she doesn’t rip them in two.) And yet I can’t quite bring myself to throw them away. I have to confess there are several piles of them at different places around the house. There’s a pile on a shelf in the living room, a pile on a shelf in the dining room, a few random dust jackets on top of the play kitchen in the girls room, some are hanging out in the office. There’s even a dust jacket (for Raggedy Andy) that I keep forgetting to pick up on the floor in the pantry by the chest freezer. Oh and there are usually a few hanging out in the book baskets in the living room too.

    So I’m afraid I don’t have any sage advice. If you can bring yourself to throw them away, that’s probably realistically the best you can do.

    I do love it when I find former library copies for sale on Amazon and elsewhere. Those lovely plastic covers on the dust jackets that are so nicely taped on. Maybe you can buy those somewhere?

  • Hi Melanie!  Thanks so much for the link.  I *love* what you say about children understanding what we read to them.  Reading aloud expands their minds and their imaginations!  I still remember my little sister sitting on my dad’s lap while we watched a video recording of a Shakespeare play.  She was three, and surely didn’t understand it, but it was a foundational part of our lives, so that there never was a time when we didn’t know Shakespeare.  I think that is a huge blessing.

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