"As early as the second century we have the witness of St. Justin Martyr for the basic lines of the order of the Eucharistic celebration. They have stayed the same until our own day for all the great liturgical families. St. Justin wrote to the pagan emperor Antoninus Pius (138-161) around the year 155, explaining [...]
"To what dangers and sufferings people will submit themselves on land and sea to acquire great wealth, to return later to their own city with pleasures and honors! Yet they neither try not care to acquire the virtues or to suffer the least bit of pain to have them, though these are the riches of [...]
"The demands of love do not contradict those of reason." Source: Pope Benedict XVI, CARITAS IN VERITATE (Charity in Truth), 6/29/2009
"Jesus Christ says, that where a person esteems his treasure to be, there also he keeps his affections. Therefore the saints, who neither esteem nor love any other treasure than Jesus Christ, centre their hearts and all their love in the Most Blessed Sacrament. My most amiable Jesus, hidden under the sacramental veils, who for [...]
"All for the Eucharist; nothing for me."
"The first step toward freedom from anger is to keep the lips silent when the heart is stirred; the next, to keep thoughts silent when the soul is upset; the last to be totally calm when unclean winds are blowing." Source: St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent
"Some have held that the substance of the bread and wine remains in this sacrament after the consecration. But this opinion cannot stand: first of all, because by such an opinion the truth of this sacrament is destroyed, to which it belongs that Christ's true body exists in this sacrament; which indeed was not there [...]
"Our enjoyment of life is vastly increased if we follow the spiritual injunction to bring some mortification and self-denial into our lives." Source: Ven. Fulton J. Sheen, Way to Happiness, St. Pauls, 1998.
"Christianity came in here as before. It came startlingly with a sword and clove one thing from another. It divided the crime from the criminal. The criminal we must forgive unto seventy times seven. The crime we must not forgive at all." Source: G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Moody Publishers, 2009.
"If poverty sometimes costs, raise your eyes, and look upon Jesus in the Eucharist. He is still poorer than you, He has much less than you. You will never equal His poverty. He keeps only the species, not even the small substance that would represent a host, if it remained bread. No, He has but [...]