The Most Precious Blood of Jesus: why July is dedicated to it — with a consecration in Latin and English

Today, 1 July, the traditional calendar keeps the feast of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and the whole month that opens with it belongs to the same devotion. June has just closed with the Sacred Heart; July takes up what June began — for the Heart and the Blood pour from the one pierced side. This is a short guide to why the month is dedicated to the Precious Blood, where the devotion comes from, and a consecration you can pray, in Latin and English, to make it your own.

Why July belongs to the Blood

The Church’s year is quietly woven together. In June she sets before us the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the human Heart of God opened by the soldier’s lance. From that same wound, St John tells us, “at once there came out blood and water” (Jn 19:34). July simply follows the flow: from the open Heart to the Blood that poured from it. The two devotions are not rivals but a single movement — love, and the price that love paid. It is no accident that the month of the Precious Blood comes immediately after the month of the Heart.

The price of our redemption

Scripture never speaks of the Blood of Christ as a detail. It is the very coin of our ransom. “You were ransomed,” St Peter writes, “not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish” (1 Pet 1:18–19). “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses” (Eph 1:7). By that Blood God made “peace… through the blood of his cross” (Col 1:20); by it “we are cleansed from all sin” (1 Jn 1:7); and in the Apocalypse the saints are those who “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev 7:14). To honour the Precious Blood is to honour the price at which we were bought — and the Eucharist, where that Blood is truly given us to drink, is the beating centre of the whole devotion.

Where the devotion — and the month — come from

Love for the Blood of Christ is as old as Calvary, and you find it burning in St Catherine of Siena, who signed her letters “in the sweet Blood of Jesus” and never tired of urging souls to “drown” themselves in it. But the devotion took its modern, organised form through a great nineteenth-century apostle, St Gaspar del Bufalo (1786–1837), founder of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, whom Pope John XXIII called “the true and greatest apostle of devotion to the Most Precious Blood.” His spiritual daughter St Maria De Mattias spread it among women through the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, and the Roman Archconfraternity of the Most Precious Blood carried it across the world.

The liturgy followed. Blessed Pius IX, on returning to Rome in 1849 after his exile at Gaeta — where a Precious Blood missionary had consoled him — extended the feast of the Most Precious Blood to the universal Church. St Pius X fixed its date at 1 July (1914). Pius XI raised it in rank in 1933 to crown the nineteenth centenary of our Redemption. So the whole month came to be dedicated to the Precious Blood. In the reform of the calendar after the Council the separate feast was joined to Corpus Christi — now the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ — but the dedication of July and the devotion itself remain, and the beautiful Litany of the Most Precious Blood was approved by St John XXIII for the whole Church in 1960.

An Act of Consecration to the Most Precious Blood

Devotion becomes real when we hand something over. This consecration may be prayed today, on the first of the month, and renewed each morning of July. Pray it in Latin, in English, or line by line in both:

How to keep the month

The devotion asks little and gives much. Keep it simply through July:

1. Pray the Act of Consecration above on the first of the month, and renew it each morning.
2. Once a week pray the Litany of the Most Precious Blood, or the Chaplet that recalls the seven sheddings of his Blood — the Circumcision, the Agony in the Garden, the Scourging, the Crowning with thorns, the way of the Cross, the Crucifixion, and the piercing of his side.
3. At Mass and Communion, where the Blood is really given, offer it to the Father in reparation for sins and for the souls in purgatory — the classic Precious Blood offering.
4. Make the old prayer Anima Christi your own: “Blood of Christ, inebriate me … within your wounds hide me.”

What the saints and Scripture say

One love, one wound, one price. In June we adore the Heart that was opened; in July we adore the Blood that flowed. Consecrate yourself to it this month, and let every day of July be lived under that saving stream. Sanguis Christi, salva me.