Colour Studies: Blood and Wine

My blood is the colour of a fine Burgundy or maybe a sweet Shiraz.  Due to a medical condition, I have to have blood drawn quite often, and the technician holds it up to the light and says, ‘Yes, it’s beautiful.’ The analogy between blood and wine when based on colour is evident to any careful observer.

            Furthermore, my blood has a secret life of its own, quite independent of my thoughts and desires.  I may feel wonderful, yet my blood knows that something sinister is going on.  I may think I’m in trouble, but my blood says that yet again, I’m worried about nothing.  The people at my blood clinic spin my blood, they check it and label it, and they say that nobody else’s blood gets mixed with mine.  Blood is private, no?

            Blood for public consumption would be a strange event.  But this idea is central to the Christian faith. The blood of Jesus undoubtedly contains many secrets too esoteric for humanity to know. Among these is the secret of life. Drinking this blood is said to give life, abundant and overflowing: the piety of the 18^th century envisaged bathing in it, washing ourselves in a spiritual fountain of blood, as Bach’s cantatas show.

            So I reflect on the paradoxical but popular literary and cinematic figure of the vampire, who gives death to mortals by drinking blood, obtaining thereby only a spurious life existing in darkness. The popularity of the vampire image seems to indicate an uncomfortable bridge between death and life in the secular mind.

            At the altar wine, having passed through the sanctifying fire of the Eucharistic Prayer, takes on the qualities of life-giving blood.  Drinking this blood cannot bring darkness to the body through which it flows. It brings light to the soul.  The bridge between death and life has been spanned by Jesus.

            As I travelled through the Yarra Valley yesterday the vineyards were alight with the glowing golden leaves of autumn.  This gold is a sign of wine harvested and wine to come, wine the colour of blood. Just as the Magi’s gold is a sign of wine and blood to come, blood and wine more valuable than gold.