"Pious humility enables us to submit to what is above us; and nothing is more exalted above us than God; and therefore humility, by making us subject to God, exalts us. But pride, being a defect of nature, by the very act of refusing subjection and revolting from Him who is supreme, falls to a [...]
"And what is the origin of our evil will but pride? For 'pride is the beginning of sin.' (Eccl. 10.13) And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation?" Source: St. Augustine, City of God
"But by the precept He gave, God commended obedience, which is, in a sort, the mother and guardian of all the virtues in the reasonable creature, which was so created that submission is advantageous to it, while the fulfillment of its own will in preference to the Creator’s is destruction." Source: St. Augustine, City [...]
"The will, therefore, is then truly free, when it is not the slave of vices and sins. Such was it given us by God; and this being lost by its own fault, can only be restored by Him who was able to at first to give it." Source: St. Augustine, City of God [...]
"For if we look at the matter a little more carefully, we shall see that even when a man dies faithfully and laudably for the truth’s sake, it is still death he is avoiding… He submits to the separation of soul and body, lest the soul be separated both from God and from the body, [...]
St. Thomas discusses a spiritual Communion, where we are unable to receive the Eucharist, but through a true desire for union with Christ, we can receive spiritually. Ideally, we would go to Mass every day and receive the Blessed Sacrament every day, but for most, that is not possible. Instead, we can desire and seek [...]
"For when he says in another book which is called Ecclesiastes, “There is no good for a man, except that he should eat and drink,” what can he be more credibly understood to say, than what belongs to the participation of this table which the Mediator of the New Testament Himself, the Priest after the [...]
"Thus the true cause of the blessedness of the good angels is found to be this, that they cleave to Him who supremely is. And if we ask the cause of the misery of the bad, it occurs to us, and not unreasonably, that they are miserable because they have forsaken Him who supremely is, and [...]
"But from the fact that the woman was made for him from his side, it was plainly meant that we should learn how dear the bond between man and wife should be." Source: St. Augustine, City of God