July 1, 2024
A message from our Provincial Director Fr. Jeffrey Kirch, C.PP.S.
On this day, we celebrate The Solemnity of the Precious Blood, along with the whole Church. It is a special celebration for religious congregations like ours, dedicated to the Precious Blood of Jesus. It has even more meaning during the worldwide Eucharistic Revival.
For Missionaries of the Precious Blood, the Precious Blood of Jesus is the starting and ending point of our identity as priests, religious brothers, and Companions. It is our motivation and inspiration. It is an inseparable part of the Eucharist that is at the heart of every Mass. At our recent Eucharistic Convocation in St. Louis, one of our presenters, Fr. Kevin Scalf, C.PP.S., called the Eucharist a “repeatable sacrament of initiation,” and through it “we are re-initiated into the body of Christ, until we become the body of Christ.”
Fr. Scalf said the Eucharist is a continuing mystery. “We savor it, but we can never say, ‘I get it!’ The more we understand, the more we understand how infinitely more there is to understand.”
So we sign up to be mystified, to be continually challenged and still embrace this mystery. With our “amen,” we consent to have our minds and hearts opened, wider and wider, to a love that has no limits.
This is what we celebrate. This is our pilgrimage. This is what we invite others into, a life so abundant that we have trouble explaining it. Together, we walk into a magnificent mystery big enough to last a lifetime and far beyond.
V. Rev. Jeffrey Kirch, C.PP.S.