Vigils Reading – Sacred Heart of Jesus

A BAPTISM OF BLOOD AND WATER

From a commentary by St Catherine of Siena6

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“Why, gentle spotless lamb, since you were dead when your side was

opened, did you want your heart to be pierced and parted?” He answered,

“there were plenty of reasons, but I shall tell you one of the chief. My longing

for humanity was infinite, but the actual deed of bearing pain and torment was

finite and could never show all the love I had. This is why I wanted you to see

my inmost heart, so that you would see that I loved you more than finite

suffering could show.”

“By shedding both blood and water I showed you the holy baptism of

water that you receive through the power of my blood. But I was also showing

you the baptism of blood, and this in two ways. The first touches those who are

baptized in their own blood poured out for me. Though they could not have the

other baptism, their own blood has power because of mine. Others are baptized

in fire when they lovingly desire baptism but cannot have it. Nor is there any

baptism of fire without blood, for blood has been fused with the fire of divine

charity, because it was shed for love.

“There is a second way the soul receives this baptism of blood, figuratively

speaking. This my divine charity provided because I know how people sin

because of weakness. Not that weakness or anything else can force them to sin

if they do not want to, but being weak they do fall into deadly sin and lose the

grace they had drawn from the power of the blood in holy baptism. So my divine

charity had to leave them an ongoing baptism of blood accessible by heartfelt

contrition and a holy confession as soon as they can confess to my ministers

who hold the key to the blood. This blood the priest pours over the soul in

absolution.

So you see, this baptism is ongoing, and the soul ought to be baptized in

it right up to the end, in the way I have told you. In this baptism you experience

that though my act of suffering on the cross was finite, the fruit of that suffering

which you have received through me is infinite. This is because of the infinite

divine nature joined with finite human nature. It was this human nature in

which I was clothed that suffered in me, the Word. But because the two natures

are fused with each other, the eternal Divinity took to itself the suffering I bore

with such burning love.

For this reason what I did can be called infinite. Not that either the actual

bodily suffering or the pain of my longing to accomplish your redemption was

infinite, for all of that ended on the cross when my soul left my body. But the

fruit was infinite that came from my suffering and from my desire for your

salvation, and therefore you receive it without limit. Had it not been infinite,

the whole of humankind, past, present and to come, would not have been

restored. Nor could those who sin get up again if this baptism of blood (that is,

the fruit of the blood) had not been given to you without limit.

I showed you this in the opening up of my side. There you find my heart’s

secret and it shows you, more than any finite suffering could, how I love you.”

6 Journey with the Fathers: Commentaries on the Sunday Gospels – Year B. New

York: New City Press, 1999. 70-71.13