"Faith today is identified with a kind of feeling or instinctive urge toward the acceptance of an idea. Very few today realize that reason is the prelude to faith. Whether they know it or not, they follow the philosophy of Jean Jacques Rouseau, who wrote to Dom Deschamps in 1762, 'Order and method are your [...]
"“Worship” itself, eucharistic communion, includes the reality both of being loved and of loving others in turn. A Eucharist which does not pass over into the concrete practice of love is intrinsically fragmented." Source: Pope Benedict XVI, God is Love: Deus Caritas Est, Ignatius Press, 2006.
"Hilary, in commenting on Mat. 26:17, held that Christ did not give His body and blood to Judas. And this would have been quite proper, if the malice of Judas be considered. But since Christ was to serve us as a pattern of justice, it was not in keeping with His teaching authority to sever [...]
"How different our lives would become if we would take an hour a day not to think about the attributes of God and the moral law, but to make the love of God and the love of neighbor experientially present in our own heart and soul! Man does not want to be with God as [...]
"Our Primitive Rule tells us to pray without ceasing. Provided we do this with all possible care (and it is the most important thing of all) we shall not fail to observe the fasts, disciplines and periods of silence which the Order commands; for, as you know, if prayer is to be genuine it must [...]
"In the natural order, a living thing assimilates its food and incorporates it into its own substance. In the Eucharist, the roles are reversed. The Eucharist is food for our soul, but the power of assimilation here belongs to Christ, and it is He Who, feeding us, unites us and incorporates us with His life. [...]
"Life in Christ has its foundation in the Eucharistic banquet: 'As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me.' On the feasts of the Lord, when the faithful receive the Body of the Son, they proclaim to one another the Good [...]
"The virtues of Our Lord are not acquired all at once. Their practice costs. Devote yourselves to them without fear, with courage and perseverance. They must be your adornment on the day on which He will present you to His Father for the celebration of the heavenly nuptials in Paradise in presence of His angels." [...]
"Among the five virtues the first is celestial love, which consists in a person knowing and loving God above all things. Then the person, because of his faith, is bound by the law God above all things. Then the person, because of his faith, is bound by the law of discipline; and from there he [...]
"Listen well to this, my children. When I first came to Ars, there was a man who never passed the church without going in. In the morning on his way to work, and in the evening on his way home, he left his spade and pick-axe in the porch, and he spent a long time [...]