Here in Great Britain our Grand Prior has encouraged us to keep the Feast of the Precious Blood (Thursday 1st July in the older calendar) as a special day of prayer to support those affected by leprosy.
The Mass texts can be found HERE (scroll down about three quarters of the page to find them).
The Precious Blood of Jesus is always described in the Scriptures as cleansing (Rev 7: 13-14). While this ultimately refers to the cleansing of the soul from sin, we remember that we believe in a resurrection of the body to life everlasting; that we may be made whole - body and soul - by the sacrifice of Our Lord and Saviour.
The month of July is dedicated to the Precious Blood. The feast of the Precious Blood of our Lord was instituted in 1849 by Pius IX, but the devotion is as old as Christianity. The early Fathers say that the Church was born from the pierced side of Christ, and that the sacraments were brought forth through His Blood.
"The Precious Blood which we worship is the Blood which the Savior shed for us on Calvary and reassumed at His glorious Resurrection; it is the Blood which courses through the veins of His risen, glorified, living body at the right hand of God the Father in heaven; it is the Blood made present on our altars by the words of Consecration; it is the Blood which merited sanctifying grace for us and through it washes and beautifies our soul and inaugurates the beginning of eternal life in it."
