Christ as Vine, Wine, and Most Precious Blood
July celebrates the Precious Blood of Jesus. The first thing that comes to my mind is the Passion, crucifixes, and Christ's redemptive suffering. But the devotion has more going on than that.
Let's go on a short journey through 3 themes, and enrich our reflections this month!
Blood has always been a big deal to humans. As far back as we can tell, we've offered wine in religious rituals, and venerated the blood of gods.
It's not surprising to then find the prophets of the Old World talking about the blood of a future son and servant of God, and pouring wine libations around the altars. I always wondered at the line, 'Blood of Christ, inebriate me', in the Anima Christi by St Ignatius.
The life of Christ is filled with references to wine, and at the crux of his life, he unites these two great themes into a single sacrament.
Here are my 3 reflections to share with you:
Why blood brings unity
Vines and Chalices
The Mystic Winepress
Why blood brings unity
The usual, visceral reaction to seeing blood is shock or disgust or fear. Blood is meant to stay 'inside', not be seen outside.
And yet the Sacred Heart of Jesus is bared to us as something intensely vulnerable, and loving.
To a non-Christian, it's intensely weird. Sharing an inner organ? Talking about 'precious blood'?
When it comes to theology, we can't be 'medical' first. We have to be 'mystical' first.
That means that we have to stand on our heads to turn things over.
It's like we have to stop walking on earth and looking up at the heavens. We have to plant our feet in Heaven and look 'down' at everything.
We have to understand that God didn't just create a heart as an organ to pump blood around a body. And then decide one day, "Oh, that's a good idea for a devotion."
He first intended to create the center of a being, the place where this being has feelings that unite the body, and is source of feeding and connecting all the parts.
This center is the thing we long to communicate to others, the thing we hope to discover in others. It is his center that he wants to communicate with us.
Ideas are a pre-existing reality. They always come first. As the human body was knit together in the growth of the world, the idea of a thing that unites a being inspired the growth of a heart. And just as our brain extends itself into matter using electricity and nerves, our center extends itself into matter through our blood.
Why say all this?
Because our bodies are a 'theology'. A theology is a study of God, a way to understand him. We can learn about him by reflecting on how we are made. And then we can start to put together the puzzle pieces of Christ's words - often so strange.
Check out all the verses in Scripture on wine, vines, and blood. Imagine them without any of the context that Christ brings. It's confusing.
So let's reflect on blood. It allows nutrition and waste, air and movement, and so much more. (I'll let the medics handle the details.)
But what's more important is what blood means.
Blood is how our center communicates to the matter of our bodies.
And that's why Christ uses this theme over and over - 'I am the Vine, and you are the branches.'
Vines & Chalices
Vines exist to grow grapes. Grapes are usually refenced for wine used in ritual. Simple things like grapes are meant to be refined and elevated into something greater, like wine. Simple things like humans to be rarified into saints.
So if he is the vine, and we are the branches, then we are united to him through the sap, the blood of the vine. When we are alive in him, that sap flows freely. That life of the Trinity 'inebriates' us. Soaks us through like a cloth dipped in water.
But when we don't have that life, we dry out. We don't bear fruit. Then the Father prunes that away.
These metaphors are how Christ is trying to share an idea that is hard to take in. It's like trying to bite the wall. The wall is there. It's just bigger than your head. Bigger than your ability to bite it.
His idea is that we are not meant to live apart from him. Separate from God. Far from divine life. He communicates to us the center of his being. And this very important.
He wants us to share our own center with him. He doesn't want us to get lost and disappear. The more he loves us, the harder he 'works' to bring us into focus, the more he make us distinct from him.
And all this talk about the most precious blood? It's the transfusion of life. Its the 'thing' that shares life between us. He gives us of his blood. His blood is the thing that 'holds' his being together. And he pours it out for us.
Pagan cannibals hope to absorb the greatness of their enemy by consuming them. The problem is that it is a destructive act.
But when God tells you to drink his blood? There's no way we could destroy him. We don't absorb his greatness. We let him absorb us.
This is the God who is the ground of being. All of creation is an expression of him. All of his acts and words and breath is an expression of him. He communicates himself through creation. And he picks one kind of matter, wine, as a symbol, and a sacrament.
Blood-Wine is the is the one thing out of all the universe that he gives us to think about, to reflect on, and to venerate. This symbol of wine pours from his heart on Calvary. We must understand these two together always.
Blood brings life, because for God, his 'blood' is his life.
That's why it's not strange at all that his first miracle is to elevate water into wine at Cana. And to let fall from on high his heart's blood on Calvary.
Wine is a drink of warmth and friendship, and now, for the first time in myth and religion, so is blood.
That's why the chalice of Christ was so venerated by groups like Templars and mystics, and the legends of the Holy Grail rivet our minds.
The grail is the thing that gathers this sacred wine and precious blood together.
And I think it's fair to say that the grail itself was never truly the search. The chalice-object was a symbol. The writers created a Christian mythology, because they realized who the chalice truly is.
Mary.
Mary is what the Ark of the Covenant was trying to be. She is what the Holy Grail was representing.
Out of her body and womb, she gave flesh to the vine-maker. He drew from her blood the matter to make his own, and then poured it out on the world. "Behold, I make all things new."
This is why the mystical reality exists within a very material reality. God said that all things were good, were very good. All of creation is a great temple, filled with angels, stars, moss, and neutrons. And man takes a beautiful liquid from this world, and offers it up in memory of Christ.
Then we don't pour it out around the horns of the altar, like the ancient Hebrews. We pour it in ourselves, because our hearts are little tabernacles.
This is a breaking point with the ancient past.
And a sticking point with the new. Both non-Christian worlds believe that man doesn't matter. Christ says we absolutely do.
The message of the most precious blood is this. That we are meant to be saturated with a divine blood transfusion.
This brings us to the mystic winepress.
The Mystic Winepress
In the opening verses of Isaiah, chapter 63, the inspired author records this vision;
“I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment. For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come.”
Old Testament verses like these are difficult They take some unpacking.
They seem to be filled with anger, justice, and bloodied vestments. They seem to have themes of terrible gods, like Moloch, or Shiva.
Strangely enough, the next verses that follow speak of the loving-kindness and mercy of God.
I imagine that this felt a lot like cognitive dissonance - trying to hold two conflicting ideas at the same time.
But this vision holds a sad beauty in it. You see, the winepress was often a metaphor for life, since grapes went in, and wine came out. The crushing, breaking, and muddling of the grapes brought forth suitable drink to be served in the highest and most important rituals.
God frequently describes his people as vines, and that he is tilling them in a garden, bringing them to fruition. All of it is cast into this mystic press. Christ 'looks around' and sees that no one can truly create the wine with him.
Bringing good out of this mesh of dried twigs, full-bodied grapes, leaves, branches, and flawed human lives is only something he can do. He treads the press, 'raging' against the evil and failure, finding a way to convert it into something beautiful and worthy of offering to the Father.
He is splashed and saturated in wine, the lifeblood of the grapes. He is 'soaked through' with our lives, with the waste of our sin, with the sweetness of our heroic actions. And he ends with 'the year of my redeemed has come.'
Perhaps the pre-Christ readers felt some fear at these visions. What was going to happen in the future? What sort of blood bath?
But what do we actually see happen?
We see Christ is both the one treading the winepress. And he is also the grapes.
He completely bleeds out, and turns himself into the wine. He crushes himself. He leaves nothing left.
And he offers himself to the Father in an act of perfect, complete, and universal love.
This month of the Precious Blood is not just a moment to think about the Passion, and the pouring of his life for us. It's more about the Divine Mercy, streams emerging from his heart.
With his life, Christ was not about placating an angry God who needed justice for all our sins.
Christ re-opened relationship for us with the Father by a perfectly-lived life, a life of complete obedience until the very last breath. A life lived in perfect love, perfect self-gift.
A life saturated with divine life.
Through the being of his body and blood, now made mystically present to us on our Sunday altars, he created a connection point. An overlap of matter and mystical reality.
He offers more than his heart, he offers the very thing that connects his heart to everything. He offers his blood as the sap that brings all our hearts together in a great vine.
The voice of his blood cries out to us from Heaven, and now we are blessed by the ground, which opened its mouth to receive his blood from our hands. (Gen 4:9)
Blessed be the precious blood of Jesus.
Please share what comes to your mind below!