July 15
"The priest says 'Let us give thanks to the Lord.' Certainly we ought to give thanks to God for having invited us, unworthy as we are, to so great a gift; for God having reconciled us to Himself when we were His enemies; for having made us His adopted sons by the Spirit."
-St. Cyril of Alexandria (350 AD)
July 14
"How sweet the [Eucharistic] presence of Jesus to the longing, harassed soul! It is instant peace, and balm to every wound."
-St. Elizabeth Ann Seton
July 13
"The assembly should prepare itself to encounter its Lord and to become 'a people well disposed.' The preparation of hearts is the joint work of the Holy Spirit and the assembly, especially of its ministers. The grace of the Holy Spirit seeks to awaken faith, conversion of heart, and adherence to the Father's will. These dispositions are the precondition both for the reception of other graces conferred in the celebration itself and the fruits of new life which the celebration is intended to produce afterward."
-Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1098
July 12
"O fortunate witnesses to whom the Blessed God, to confound my disbelief, has wished to reveal Himself in this Most Blessed Sacrament and to render Himself visible to our eyes. Come, brethren, and marvel at our God so close to us. Behold the Flesh and Blood of our most beloved Christ."
-Brasilian Monk in 700 A.D. who witnessed the miracle of Lanciano
July 10
"Our sensible appetites, inclined to sensuality and to sloth, need to be vivified by contact with the virginal body of Christ, who endured most frightful sufferings for love of us. We, who are always inclined to pride, to lack of consideration, to forgetfulness of the greatest truths, to spiritual folly, need to be illumined by contact with the sovereignty luminous intellect of the Savior, who is 'the way, the truth, and the life.'"
-Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life
July 9
"O Heart, fountain of sweetness!
Give me to drink, unworthy as I am,
of the wine of Thy comfort.
In Thy divine charity raise up the ruins of my spirit,
and out of Thy superabundance of charity,
atone for all the beggary and neediness of my soul."
-Prayer of St. Gertrude the Great (adapted)
July 8
"...Fourteen years later, God opened my heart to consider the claims of the Catholic Church. The Church taught that Jesus meant what He said to the Jews in John, Chapter 6: 'Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed' (John 6:53-55).
I finally realized that if the Eucharist is Christ, there is no where else on earth to be but the Church our Savior established and for which He gave His life, and through which He gives us His very self -- Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity -- as our Food."
-Rosalind Moss, Mother Miriam of the Lamb of God, O.S.B.
July 7
"...We have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharist prayer set down by him...is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus."
-St. Justin Martyr
July 6
"How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?"
-Romans 10:14
