"In the first place, purity is an “ability” or, in the traditional language of anthropology and ethics, an attitude. And in this sense it is a virtue. When this ability, that is, virtue, leads to abstaining 'from unchastity,' it does so because the man who possesses it knows 'how to keep his own body with [...]
"When celebrating the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of the Lord, the full magnitude of the divine mystery must be respected, as must the full meaning of this sacramental sign in which Christ is really present and is received, the soul is filled with grace and the pledge of future glory is given." [...]
"With all the greater reason, then, it is not permissible for us, in thought, life or action, to take away from this truly most holy Sacrament its full magnitude and its essential meaning. It is at one and the same time a Sacrifice-Sacrament, a Communion-Sacrament, and a Presence-Sacrament And, although it is true that the [...]
"Purity consists above all in holding back the impulses of sense-desire, which has as its object what is bodily and sexual in man. Purity is a variant of the virtue of temperance." Source: Pope St. John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, Pauline Books and Media, 2006.
"Indeed, the Eucharist is the ineffable Sacrament! The essential commitment and, above all, the visible grace and source of supernatural strength for the Church as the People of God is to persevere and advance constantly in Eucharistic life and Eucharistic piety and to develop spiritually in the climate of the Eucharist." Source: Pope St. [...]
"The Church lives by the Eucharist, by the fullness of this Sacrament, the stupendous content and meaning of which have often been expressed in the Church's Magisterium from the most distant times down to our own days. However, we can say with certainty that, although this teaching is sustained by the acuteness of theologians, by [...]
"In the Eucharist we touch in a way the very mystery of the Body and Blood of the Lord, as is attested by the very words used at its institution, the words that, because of that institution, have become the words with which those called to this ministry in the Church unceasingly celebrate the Eucharist." [...]
"It is an essential truth, not only of doctrine but also of life, that the Eucharist builds the Church, building it as the authentic community of the People of God, as the assembly of the faithful, bearing the same mark of unity that was shared by the Apostles and the first disciples of the Lord. [...]
"Purity is a requirement of love. It is the dimension of the inner truth of love in man’s 'heart.'" Source: Pope St. John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, Pauline Books and Media, 2006.
"Christ opposed it (external moral purity) in a radical manner: nothing makes a man unclean 'from the outside'; no 'material' dirtiness makes a man impure in a moral sense. No washing, not even ritual washing, is by itself suited to produce moral purity. Moral purity has its wellspring exclusively in man’s interior: it comes from [...]