"Friendship demands very close correspondence between those who love one another, otherwise it can never take root or continue." Source: St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Random House, Inc., 2002.
"If from the beginning Christians have celebrated the Eucharist and in a form whose substance has not changed despite the great diversity of times and liturgies, it is because we know ourselves to be bound by the command the Lord gave on the eve of his Passion: 'Do this in remembrance of me.'" Source: [...]
"As well as physical hunger, man also suffers from another form of hunger that cannot be sated with ordinary food. It is a hunger for life, a hunger for love, a hunger for eternity. Manna is the sign… that prefigured the food that satisfies this profound hunger present in man. Jesus gives us this nourishment [...]
"Now, of all goods, spiritual or bodily, there is none at all to compare with virtue. For virtue makes a good use of both of itself and of all other goods in which lies man’s happiness; and where it is absent, no matter how many good things a man has, they are not for his [...]
"Christ’s words are demanding. They demand that in the sphere in which relationships with persons of the other sex are formed, man has full and deep conscious of his own acts, and above all in his interior acts, and that he is consciousness of the inner impulses of his own 'heart' so that he can [...]
"Mary's Assumption body and soul into heaven is for us a sign of sure hope, for it shows us, on our pilgrimage through time, the eschatological goal of which the sacrament of the Eucharist enables us even now to have a foretaste." Source: Pope Benedict XVI, SACRAMENTUM CARITATIS (Sacrament of Charity), 2/22/2007 [...]
"In His Eucharist, Jesus is the very essence of purity. He is so pure that He unites Himself to no body, not even to the substance of the bread, since He destroys it in order to take its place; nor even to the visible accidents, for He is united to them neither substantially nor personally. [...]
"It is clear that without gratuitousness, there can be no justice in the first place… attitudes of gratuitousness cannot be established by law." Source: Pope Benedict XVI, CARITAS IN VERITATE (Charity in Truth), 6/29/2009
"Learn, then, to suffer little things now that you may not have to suffer greater ones in eternity. Prove here what you can bear hereafter. If you can suffer only a little now, how will you be able to endure eternal torment? If a little suffering makes you impatient now, what will hell fire do? [...]
“In the communion, preceded by the Lord's prayer and the breaking of the bread, the faithful receive ‘the bread of heaven’ and ‘the cup of salvation,’ the body and blood of Christ who offered himself ‘for the life of the world’: Because this bread and wine have been made Eucharist (‘eucharisted,’ according to an ancient [...]