My dear friends, I am very appreciative of this opportunity to be with you today for this special occasion and I thank you for your invitation to preside over this Mass of thanksgiving on the occasion of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Sisters Adorers of the Precious Blood.

My dear friends, I am very appreciative of this opportunity to be with you today for this special occasion and I thank you for your invitation to preside over this Mass of thanksgiving on the occasion of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Sisters Adorers of the Precious Blood.

Being invited here today I thought was a good opportunity to find out more about this community which has been in Regina since 1933. Like many good things in life, one knows that the Sisters are here and we know that they are praying for us, but we often don’t know much about their history or the reason for their foundation. At least I need to speak for myself on this matter.

It was very encouraging, even very enlightening, to read about this community’s founding by Catherine Aurelia Caouette.  It was the first contemplative community to be founded in Canada.  And, as I understand it, its purpose is to adore Jesus, the Christ, whose sacrificial love has saved the world, and to do this through prayer within contemplative community life, devoted to silence, solitude, recollection, and penance. 

 

To be adorers of the Precious Blood of Jesus is to be adorers of Jesus whose love for us brought him to shed his blood on the Cross and die so that the world may live. We talk about love a lot in the Church – and rightly so, for love is the foundation of our whole relationship with God and with God’s Son Jesus. We sometimes like to forget that this love is sacrificial, that it involves giving something of oneself for the good of the one who is loved.

We’re not alone. Peter had the same problem as we saw in the Gospel today. I have a great feeling of empathy for St. Peter. His journey of faith was a real roller coaster with some great highs and some very deep lows. To look at Peter’s struggles of faith is very encouraging, I think, for those of us who find the journey of faith not always smooth and easy.

The reason for Peter’s crash in today’s gospel, was that Jesus began to teach these people, who were his friends, who were following him and learning to be his disciples, that his love was to be a sacrificial love, that he was to go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and he was going to be killed.

That was not in Peter’s vocabulary at all. Peter takes Jesus aside.  St. Matthew says Peter rebuked Jesus, saying, “God forbid it, Lord. This must never happen to you.”  We can’t be too hard on Peter; he said this out of love for Jesus. But Jesus blew his top. Calls Peter Satan and upbraids for thinking in human terms and not in God’s terms. Jesus’ love involved the giving of his life.  St. John in his Gospel would remember Jesus words: ¹³No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Jesus love was total, it was complete and it was perfect, and it would be demonstrated on the cross as his life blood flowed from the wounds in his body, all of this suffering endured for us whom Jesus loves.

 

I just returned this past week from accompanying 40 young people from our diocese on the World Youth Day activities in Madrid. Before going to Spain we did a pilgrimage in Italy and one of the places we visited was Assisi, the home of St. Francis and St. Clare. In the Basilica where St. Clare is buried is displayed the cross from which St. Francis heard the voice of God telling Francis to rebuild his Church. The cross is quite famous and many of you I am sure have seen pictures or representations of it. What is particular about it, is that Christ on that cross is not a suffering Christ. It is a glorified, risen Christ that is portrayed on this 13^th century cross. This was not uncommon in the church for these first many centuries. When they wanted to portray the suffering Christ, it was most often portrayed by a picture the sacrificial lamb.

And so we find, especially in the Book of Revelation, the reference to the cleansing power of the blood of the Lamb, and references to the Paschal Lamb which was slaughtered each year at the Passover. Indeed Jesus suffering, death and resurrection is called his Passover.

 

 

But not long after Francis’ time, because of a heresy which taught that Jesus only appeared to be human and only appeared to suffer on the Cross, the Church ruled that representations of Jesus on the Cross needed to show his true suffering. For it is by the blood of Jesus that we are saved, it is by the suffering and death that the extent of Jesus sacrificial love for us is shown. We are all familiar with the crucifix which now shows Jesus giving his life on the cross.

The Sisters Adorers of the Precious Blood are a constant reminder of this sacrificial love of Jesus, which in his total self giving, was more powerful that darkness and death.

It is a reminder that our love too needs to be sacrificial. Our love must be a giving of ourselves for the good of others.  I would like to share with you something from my own life that has been for me an example of this.

 

When I was small, I would spend a week or two every summer with my grandparents who lived on the Miramichi River in New Brunswick. It is a large river and  so there was a ferry boat which took 10 or 15 cars across the river at the main highway to the north of the province. My grandfather, to keep me entertained, would take me down for a ride across the river and back on the ferry, which took a half hour. He was friends with the captain, so we would go up onto the bridge and  I would have the thrill of a boat ride and they would catch up on the news.

One day the captain called me over to the wheel and said: “Here you steer it across.” You can imagine what a thrill that was for a 10 year old boy. That 10 car ferry could have been an ocean liner as far as I was concerned. So after that, of course, I wanted to go every day.

Well, my grandfather had arthritis and it was painful for him to walk. Unknown to me, one day he said to my grandmother: “I hope Danny doesn’t ask to go to the ferry today.” Well, of course, as soon as I came down for breakfast, I asked: “Papa, can we go to the ferry today.” Please!” And without a word of complaint, off we went. That involved a big sacrifice on his part. He did it, because he loved his grandson. To this day, I have never forgotten that. He gave of himself for my benefit out of love for me. That was sacrificial love.

 

This is the love that Jesus calls us to in the Gospel. And this is the love that the Sisters of the Precious Blood recall to us continually in their contemplative and prayer centred life.

In our gratitude, we pray today, that God will continue to bless this community and that we in the Archdiocese of Regina will continue to benefit from their witness, from their prayers and from their example which gives us a constant reminder of God’s deep and self emptying love which has won for us the fullness of life forever.