Devotion: the great cross-shaped offering to Jesus and Mary

OFFER IN THE FORM OF A CROSS

The offer of the Divine Blood is very precious. This offer is made solemnly in the Holy Mass; privately it can be done by everyone with prayer.

The offer of Our Lady's tears is also accepted by God. It is advisable to make this offer in the form of a cross.

Eternal Father, I offer you the Blood of Jesus and the tears of the Virgin:

(to the forehead) for the living and the dead;

(in the chest) for me and for the souls that I want to save.

(left shoulder) for the victim souls.

(to the right shoulder) for the dying.

(joining hands) for tempted souls and those who are in mortal sin.

(Devotion sent by Stefania Udine)

Even in the time of illness and especially in the last moments of our life, the Blood of Jesus offers us salvation. Jesus dying in the Gethsemane! it gives us an image of that supreme moment in which our soul will separate from the body. Pain for body and soul: the last decisive temptations.

Even for Jesus it was a hard struggle, so much so that he prayed to his Father to remove from him that cup full of bitterness. Despite being God, he never ceased to be man and to suffer as man.

It will be harder for us, because the fear of God's judgment will be added to the pain. Where will we find the strength we will need in those moments? We will find it in the Blood of Jesus, our only defense in the last trial.

The priest will pray over us and anoint us with the oil of salvation, so that the power of the devil does not overcome our weakness and the angels carry us in the arms of the Father. To obtain forgiveness and salvation, the priest will not appeal to our merits, but to the merits earned by the Blood of Jesus.

How much joy, despite the pain, at the thought that, thanks to that Blood, the door of heaven will be able to open for us too!

Fioretto Think often about death and pray that you may be granted the grace of a holy death.

EXAMPLE In the life of S. Francesco Borgia we read this terrible fact. The saint was assisting a dying man and, prostrated on the ground next to the bed with a Crucifix, with warm words he urged the poor sinner not to make Jesus' death useless for himself. Suddenly the Crucifix began to drip alive Blood from the wounds: a miracle wanted by God to invite the obstinate sinner to ask forgiveness for all his faults. Everything was futile. Then the Crucified One detached a hand from the cross and, after having filled it with his Blood, he approached it to that sinner, but once again that man's obstinacy was greater than the mercy of the Lord. That man died with a hardened heart in his sins, also refusing that extreme gift that Jesus had made of his Blood to save him from hell.