Jump to content

Eucharist

From Wikiquote
A Kremikovtsi Monastery fresco (15th century) depicting the Last Supper celebrated by Jesus and his disciples. The early Christians too would have celebrated this meal to commemorate Jesus' death and subsequent resurrection.
The Virgin Mary with s. Paul and s. Thomas Aquinas (altarpiece portable to triptych, to tempera on wood, work by Bernardo Daddi, 1330 ca. The Virgin Mary holds in her hand a text that contains the first words of the Magnificat, while Thomas, author of one of the most important medieval commentaries on the Pauline epistolary, holds one of his works in her hand.
Eucharistic window (1898–1900) by Józef Mehoffer
Transubstantiation – the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharistic Adoration at Saint Thomas Aquinas Cathedral in Reno, Nevada

The Eucharist (from Koine Greek εὐχαριστία, trnsl. evcharistía, which means "thanksgiving), also called Holy Communion, the Blessed Sacrament or the Lord's Supper, is a Christian rite, considered a sacrament in most churches and an ordinance in others. Christians believe that the rite was instituted by Jesus at the Last Supper, the night before his crucifixion, giving his disciples bread and wine. Passages in the New Testament state that he commanded them to "do this in memory of me" while referring to the bread as "my body" and the cup of wine as "the blood of my covenant, which is poured out for many".

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

Quotes

[edit]
  • Since Christ Himself said in reference to the bread: "This is My Body," who will dare remain hesitant? And since with equal clarity He asserted: "This is My Blood," who will dare entertain any doubt and say that this is not His Blood?... You have been taught these truths. Imbued with the certainty of faith, you know that what seems to be bread is not bread but the Body of Christ, although it seems to be bread when tasted. You also know that what seems to be wine is not wine but the Blood of Christ although it does taste like wine.
  • Holy Communion is the shortest and safest way to Heaven. There are others: innocence, but that is for little children; penance, but we are afraid of it; generous endurance of trials of life, but when they come we weep and ask to be delivered. The surest, easiest, shortest way is the Eucharist.
    • Pope Pius X. As quoted in Quotable Saints (2003) by Ronda Chervin, p. 79
  • The more Eucharist we receive, the more we will become like Jesus, so that on this earth we will have a foretaste of Heaven.
  • Ante agnus offerebatur, offerebatur et vitulus, nunc Christus offertur...et offert se ipse quasi sacerdos, ut peccata nostra dimittat. Hic in imagine, ibi in veritate, ubi apud Patrem pro nobis quasi advocatus intervenit.
    • Formerly a lamb was offered, a calf was offered. Christ is offered today...and he offers himself as priest in order that he may remit our sins: here in image, there in truth where, as our advocate, he intercedes for us before the Father.
    • De officiis ministrorum ("On the Offices of Ministers" or, "On the Duties of the Clergy"), Book I, ch. 48.[1]
    • In, The Eucharist in the West: History and Theology, Edward J. Kilmartin, SJ, Robert J. Daly, SJ, Editor, 1998, The Liturgical Press, ISBN 0814662048 ISBN 9780814662045, p. 19 [2]
    • Alternate translation: In old times a lamb, a Calf was offered; now Christ is offered. But He is offered as man and as enduring suffering. And He offers Himself as a priest to take away our sins, here in an image, there in truth, where with the Father He intercedes for us as our Advocate. [3]

A

[edit]
  • In one case as in the other, the question which gives away the sacrificial mentality underlying group belonging is the same: are you for us, or are you one of them? It is the question which reveals the impossibility of a cracking of heart, and thus the impossibility of Eucharist.
  • Dogma datur Christiánis,
Quod in carnem transit panis,
Et vinum in sánguinem.
Sub divérsis speciébus,
Signis tantum, et non rebus,
Latent res exímiæ.
Caro cibus, sanguis potus:
Manet tamen Christus totus,
Sub utráque spécie.
A suménte non concísus,
Non confráctus, non divísus:
Integer accípitur.
    • Hear, what holy Church maintaineth,
That the bread its substance changeth
Into Flesh, the wine to Blood.
Doth it pass thy comprehending?
Faith, the law of sight transcending
Leaps to things not understood.
Here beneath these signs are hidden
Priceless things, to sense forbidden,
Signs, not things, are all we see.
Flesh from bread, and Blood from wine,
Yet is Christ in either sign,
All entire, confessed to be.

B

[edit]
  • God created the world through an active speech. God's Word is not descriptive, it is creative. God speaks the worls is being...God's Word changes, it is effective, makes things happen...What God says, is. If Jesus is just a spiritual teacher among many, one great religious figure, okay, fine. But there are thousands of those. What claims the Church is He is not a human figure amomg many, but He is the Word made flesh. The very embodiement of God [as a] transformative and creative work. The night before he dies, that Jesus took bread, the Pasqual bead, and said: "This is my Body." Taking the goblet with the meal, said: "This is the chalice of my Blood". If that [was said] by a human being, a great hero, a philosopher, a social reformer, okay, we say: "He is using a symbolic talk." But who is saying that? The Word made flesh. The Word whose speech constitutes reality at the deepest level. Just as if God spokes you to be, so Jesus speaks His presence into being, over the appearence of bread and wine...We move into His very identity at that point. We now commence to speak in the first person, saying: "Take this, all of you, and eat it. This is my Body given for you." We speak in persona Christi, we speak in the very Word of Jesus.
  • [Edvige] lived an ordinary life, from the outside the same as that of so many laypeople, but extraordinary in terms of her intimacy with God, her union with Him, to the point of identifying with Jesus in a perfect and transforming union with Him, the spouse of souls. Friend of the poor and the marginalized, she had words of consolation for everyone … If we ask what are the strong points of the Christian life of this sister of ours, and which lead her to be an example of welcoming prayerfulness and humble and joyful abnegation, we would say that there are essentially two: constant contemplation of the Crucified Lord and the adoration of the Eucharist.
  • The concept seemed ambiguous to me, and the emphasis with which "pastorality" was attributed to the current Council was somewhat suspect: was it not meant to implicitly say that the previous Councils did not intend to be "pastoral" or had not been pastoral enough? Had it not had pastoral relevance to make it clear that Jesus of Nazareth was God and consubstantial with the Father, as defined at Nicaea? Had it not had pastoral relevance to clarify the realism of the Eucharistic presence and the sacrificial nature of the Mass, as had been done at Trent?. There was a danger of no longer remembering that the first and irreplaceable mercy for lost humanity is, according to the clear teaching of Revelation, the mercy of truth, a mercy that cannot be exercised without the explicit, firm, constant condemnation of every misrepresentation and every alteration of the deposit of faith, which must be preserved. St Thomas Aquinas noted this in the 'Summa contra Gentiles' (I, 2): the task of theology is to "manifest the truth professed by the Catholic faith, eliminating errors contrary to it".

C

[edit]
  • The terms of this new religion, though based on Hebrew models, were Greek terms. Christ, Ekklēsia (Church), Baptism, Eucharist, Agapē (Lovingkindness)—all of Christianity's central words were Greek words. Christian patterns of thought... could indeed be traced to their origins in the coastal Levant, but they often shone with a Greek patina.
    • Thomas Cahill, Ch.VII The Way They Went: Greco-Roman Meets Judeo-Christian

The Church Father Clement described abuse of the eucharist by the Gnostics in the church at Alexandria, Egypt: There are some who call Aphrodite Pandemos [physical love] a mystical communion….[T]hey have impiously called by the name of communion any common sexual intercourse.

D

[edit]
  • ...my belief in the sacrament of the Eucharist is simple: without touch, God is a monologue, an idea, a philosophy; he must touch and be touched, the tongue on flesh, and that touch is the result of the monologues, the idea, the philosophies which led to faith; but in the instant of the touch there is no place for thinking, for talking; the silent touch affirms all that, and goes deeper: it affirms the mysteries of love and mortality.
    • Andre Dubus, Broken Vessels (1991), On Charon’s Wharf.
  • In his own poetic style, the French Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin liked to meditate on the Eucharist as the firstfruits of the new creation. In an essay called The Monstrance he describes how, kneeling in prayer, he had a sensation that the Host was beginning to grow until at last, through its mysterious expansion, "the whole world had become incandescent, had itself become like a single giant Host." Although it would probably be incorrect to imagine that the universe will eventually be transubstantiated, Teilhard correctly identified the connection between the Eucharist and the final glorification of the cosmos.
    • Cardinal Avery Dulles, in "A Eucharistic Church : The Vision of John Paul II" (10 November 2004)

E

[edit]
  • We are both poets and we both like to play. That's the similarity. The difference is this: I like to play euchre. He likes to play Eucharist.
    • about T. S. Eliot. Robert Frost, in Lawrance Thompson, 'Notes from Conversations with Robert Frost' (unpublished), in The Cambridge Companion to Robert Frost, ed. R. Faggen (2001)
  • My opinion is that the best law is an education of quality, that begins in the family, grows at school and finds in society a stimulus for the formation of people. We are greatly lacking in civic friendship, we look at one another as mad people and not as brethren or as people who share the same ideal, the same purpose.

F

[edit]
  • For millions of men and women, the church has been the hospital for the soul, the school for the mind and the safe depository for moral ideas.
    • Gerald Ford, Speech to the International Eucharistic Conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as quoted in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner (13 August 1976)

G

[edit]
  • If they love their eternal health, never neglect a visit to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and to the Most Holy Mary of Sorrows.
  • Do grant, O my Lord Jesus, that when my lips approach Thine to kiss Thee, I may taste the gall that was given Thee. And when my shoulders lean against Thine, make me feel Thy scourgings. And when my flesh is united with Thine in the Holy Eucharist, make me feel Thy Passion. And when my head comes near to Thine, make me feel Thy thorns. And when my heart is close to Thine, make me feel Thine embrace.
    • Gemma Galgani. Quoted in The Life of St. Gemma Galgani by her spiritual director Ven. Germanus, trans. A. M. O'Sullivan, 1999, p. 258.
  • Paul VI's intention regarding the liturgy, regarding the vulgarisation of the Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy so that it would coincide more or less with the Protestant liturgy... with the Protestant Supper. And further on: "... I repeat that Paul VI did everything in his power to bring the Catholic Mass – beyond the Council of Trent – closer to the Protestant Supper. He was particularly helped by Monsignor Bugnini, who did not always enjoy his confidence on this point. [...] Of course, I did not attend the Calvinist Supper, but I did attend Paul VI's Mass. And Paul VI's Mass presents itself first and foremost as a banquet, does it not? It insists very much on the aspect of participation in a banquet, and much less on the notion of sacrifice, of ritual sacrifice, in the face of God, while the priest shows only his back. So I do not think I am mistaken in saying that the intention of Paul VI and of the new liturgy that bears his name is to ask the faithful for greater participation in the Mass, to give a greater place to Sacred Scripture and a lesser place to everything else in it, some say “magical”, others “consubstantial consecration”, [correcting himself] transubstantiation, which is the Catholic faith. In other words, Paul VI had the ecumenical intention of removing – or at least correcting, attenuating – what was too “Catholic”, in the traditional sense, in the Mass, and of bringing the Catholic Mass – I repeat – closer to the Calvinist Mass.

H

[edit]
  • Although Christian "clergy," such as bishops and deacons, begin to appear around the year A.D. 100 in early Christian communities, priests emerge as Christian leaders only much later. Priests came to be the ordained clergy tasked with officiating rituals like the Eucharist or Lord's Supper, also known as Communion.
    And what about their celibacy? Even here, evidence is both unclear and late: there were reports that some bishops at the Council of Nicea, called by Emperor Constantine in A.D. 325 to address the problem of heresies, argued for a consistent practice of priestly celibacy. This, however, was voted down at the conclusion of the council. The debate resurfaced a couple of hundred years later, but still without uniform agreement.
    Over time, priestly celibacy became a serious point of disagreement between the Eastern Orthodox and the Western Roman Catholic churches and contributed to the Great Schism between the two in A.D. 1054. Pope Gregory VII attempted to mandate priestly celibacy, but the practice was contested widely by Christians in the Orthodox Eastern Mediterranean world.
    Five centuries later, the issue was once again at the forefront of debate when it became a significant factor in the Protestant split from Catholicism during the Reformation.
  • A martyr to the cause of man,
    His blood is freedom's eucharist,
    And in the world's great hero list
    His name shall lead the van.
  • If the Church would have her face shine, she must go up into the mount, and be alone with God. If she would have her courts of worship resound with eucharistic praises, she must open her eyes, and see humanity lying lame at the temple gates, and heal it in the miraculous name of Jesus.
    • Frederic Dan Huntington, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 145.

I

[edit]
  • The Latin osculum is neither very old nor frequent. It is one of three words that can be translated by the English, "kiss." In comparison with the affectionate basium and the lascivious suavium, osculum was a latecomer into classical Latin, and was used in only one circumstance as a ritual gesture: In the second century, it became the sign given by a departing soldier to a woman, thereby recognizing her expected child as his offspring.
    In the Christian liturgy of the first century, the osculum assumed a new function. It became one of two high points in the celebration of the Eucharist. Conspiratio, the mount-to-mouth kiss, became the solemn liturgical gesture by which participants in the cult-action shared their breath or spirit with one another. It came to signify their union in one Holy Spirit, the community that takes shape in God's breath. The ecclesia came to be through a public ritual action, the liturgy, and the soul of this liturgy was the conspiratio. Explicitly, corporeally, the central Christian celebration was understood as a co-breathing, a con-spiracy, the bringing about of a common atmosphere, a divine milieu.
  • Ivan Illich, "The Cultivation of Conspiracy" (1998)
  • They used to say of Abba Isaac that he used to eat ashes from the thurible used at the Eucharist with his bread.

J

[edit]
  • As an Altar Attendant... observing, especially during Eucharist, the intensity and power of his praying was spell binding. It seemed to me that he was not standing on the floor, but elevated. I mentioned this to others, and they agreed. St John was not a big man physically, but when he blessed the bread and wine, at that moment, making the Sign of the Cross over the Challis and Discus (plate) as required, he would thump the Altar Table, as he made the Sign. He could not have reached so far without being elevated. Recalling it now, I still get chills.
  • The greatest of all the reformers of the depraved religion of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill. ... The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems, [footnote: e.g. The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy, etc. —T.J.] invented by ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by him, is a most desirable object, and one to which Priestley has successfully devoted his labors and learning. It would in time, it is to be hoped, effect a quiet euthanasia of the heresies of bigotry and fanaticism which have so long triumphed over human reason, and so generally and deeply afflicted mankind; but this work is to be begun by winnowing the grain from the chaff of the historians of his life.
  • It wasn't just in Southern evangelical churches or Baptist churches. ... Even when [the Methodists] admitted African American churches into the larger Methodist denomination, they segregated them into one jurisdiction. It was essentially a version of religious gerrymandering so that they would get one bishop instead of possibly competing for power in other jurisdictions; they were all locked into one jurisdiction, so their voice inside the denomination will be smaller.
    And even among white Catholics, the Catholic Church had long had a practice of African Americans sitting in the back. [They] couldn't come and take part of the Eucharist until all the white members had done so. New York, for example, did the same thing, and actually segregated the African American Catholics into a single parish and also made only one Catholic school available to African Americans and made it a segregated school. And these practices continued in the middle of the 20th century, even even among Catholics in the North.

K

[edit]
  • We are here to pay respect to the successor of Peter and share with him all our joys and worries of our pastoral experiences. We want to share, with the Pope and others, our concern in regard to the lack of Eucharistic ministers, thus the gradual spiritual starvation of our Catholic people and their moving away from us to find spiritual nourishment elsewhere. What can we do to stop this spiritual wandering of our people?
  • In the early twentieth century, attention was drawn to Catherine’s remarkable mystical, mental, and at times almost pathological, experiences through the classic study by Baron Friedrich von Hügel, The Mystical Element in Religion as Studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and Her Friends (1908). The last ten years of Catherine’s life were marked by violent interior emotions, mentioned in her works. It has been said that in many ways Catherine of Genoa is a “theologian of purgatory,” a purgatory that she herself experienced in a marriage she did not desire, in her care for plague victims, and also in her nervous illness. She also experienced purgatory spiritually as the soul’s realization of its own imperfections, in her search for salvation and purification. Influenced by Plato and Dionysius, the focus of her mysticism was, in spite of her eucharistic devotion, not so much Christ, but above all the infinite God. Her mysticism is primarily theocentric, not Christocentric. She speaks of the absorption into the totality of God as if immersed into an ocean: “I am so…submerged in His immense love, that I seem as though immersed in the sea, and nowhere able to touch, see or feel aught but water.” At the height of her mystical experiences, she could exclaim: “My being is God, not by simple participation but by a true transformation of my being.”
    • Ursula King, Christian Mystics: Their Lives and Legacies Throughout the Ages (1998), p. 42
  • The Pope would have an easier job than the President of the United States in adopting a change of course. He has no Congress alongside him as a legislative body nor a Supreme Court as a judiciary. He is absolute head of government, legislator and supreme judge in the church. If he wanted to, he could authorize contraception over night, permit the marriage of priests, make possible the ordination of women and allow eucharistic fellowship with this Protestant churches. What would a Pope do who acted in the spirit of Obama?

L

[edit]
  • None were admitted to baptism, or the Eucharist, unless they had taken an oath against having any children.
    • Nathaniel Lardner, John Hogg, The Historie of the Heretics of the two First Centuries After Christ, 1780
    • Description: about Marcionites.
  • Because this is so-- because of the great work done and the terrible suffering which it entails-- there is this special department of the government of the world, and the duty of its officials is to look after every woman in the time of her suffering, and give her such help and strength as her karma allows. As we have said, the World-Mother has at her command vast hosts of angelic beings, and at the birth of every child one of these is always present as her representative. To every celebration of the Holy Eucharist comes an Angel of the Presence, who is in effect a thought-form of the Christ Himself-- the form through which He endorses and ratifies the Priest' s act of consecration; and so it is absolutely true that, though the Christ is one and indivisible, He is nevertheless simultaneously present upon many thousands of altars. In something the same way... the World-Mother herself is present in and through her representative at the bedside of every suffering mother. Many women have seen her under such conditions, and many who have not been privileged to see have yet felt the help and the strength which she outpours.
  • Thousands of communities meet on Sunday not for the Eucharist but for a service of the Word. We cannot allow this situation to continue. If the faithful and the priests become used to this wound in our faith life, they will give up looking for solutions. We vehemently oppose other distortions of our faith; therefore we must reject this one as well.
  • In the past, some media has tried to portray this effort as inimical to the ecumenical effort, and that cannot be further from the truth. For one thing, Anglicanorum coetibus was a generous, pastoral response by Pope Benedict XVI to groups of people who were making a direct request of the Holy See. It is also ecumenically significant in that it demonstrates, perhaps for the first time, that corporate, Eucharistic unity is possible in a way that does not simply assimilate. The ecumenical principle that informs Anglicanorum coetibus is that unity in the profession of Catholic faith allows for a vibrant diversity in the expression of that same faith. That is, to my mind, exactly what ecumenical dialogues have been building towards.

M

[edit]
  • For the evangelical left, those who suffer largely exist as mechanisms for others’ salvation, but not as beings with consciences of their own—or more precisely, they are allowed to have their own conscience if and only if it fits into their salvation model. Else, they can be considered as corrupted. The black man loses his “blackness,” which is a state of grace and nothing to do with skin color. Clarence Thomas isn’t “really” black but Bill Clinton is, in the same way that the Eucharist literally becomes the body of Christ.
    • Michael Malice, The New Right: A Journey into the Fringe of American Politics (2019)
  • One of the greatest problems in present-day Eucharistic celebration is the temptation to abandon the traditional explanations without proposing appropriate substitutions. It was easy to demolish the past, but explanations have not been suggested that might last longer. The solution of course is not to continue with the guidelines of the past, and beyond renewing exterior forms, we must add new vital sap. The form can change or remain the same, what is important is to have a new justification, with greater vigor and support.
  • The things, good Lord, that I pray for, give me thy grace to labour for. Amen.
    • Thomas More, English Prayers and Treatise on the Holy Eucharist, ed. Philip E. Hallett, p. 20 (1938). His English works were published in 1557.
  • What will convert America and save the world? My answer is prayer. What we need is for every parish to come before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament in Holy Hours of prayer.
  • When the Sisters are exhausted, up to their eyes in work; when all seems to go awry, they spend an hour in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. This practice has never failed to bear fruit: they experience peace and strength.
  • I know I would not be able to work one week if it were not for that continual force coming from Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament (during my Holy Hour of Adoration).

N

[edit]
  • If I were tied to the letter of the Scriptures and rigid dogma, I believe I could not have painted these profoundly felt paintings about the Eucharist and the 'Pentecost' [religious paintings, he made c. 1909-11) I had to be artistically free - not have God before me. like a steely Assyrian ruler, but God in me, hot and holy like Christ's love.
    • Emil Nolde. As quoted in Expressionism, a German intuition, 1905-1920, Neugroschel, Joachim; Vogt, Paul; Keller, Horst; Urban, Martin; Dube, Wolf Dieter; (transl. Joachim Neugroschel); publisher: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1980, p. 3
  • Our faith is counter-cultural to the American ideal of individualism. We are a part of the universality founded in Christ and thus a part of a larger, single family-the people of God. The care of our common home does not fall in step with individualism. God asks us to think about ourselves in relationship to God and thus in relationship to our immediate family and our extended family throughout the world.

O

[edit]
  • Inevitably, this period of lockdown will have repercussions on the lives and the faith of our Christians, both positive and negative. There will be a before and an after. For some, being unable to take part in the Eucharistic celebration will deepen their desire and thirst for God and for union and communion with him and with their community. For lukewarm Christians, however, this could be the end.

P

[edit]
  • Peckham's visitation of Lincoln diocese brought him to Oxford on 30 Oct, 1284, when he condemned certain erroneous opinions in grammar, logic, and natural philosophy, which, though censured by his Dominican predecessor, Kilwardby, had now [been] revived. ...Chief among them was the vexed question of the 'form' of the body of Christ, which involved the received doctrine of the Eucharist. The doctrines in question were maintained by the Dominican rivals of Peckham's own order, and their condemnation appeared to impugn the reputation of the Dominican doctor St. Thomas Aquinas. ...The prior [of the Dominicans], he said, had misrepresented him; he was actuated by no hostility to the Dominicans, nor to the honoured memory of St. Thomas; he had no intention to unduly favour his own order, and his censure was supported by the action of his predecessor.
  • John Peckham,
  • If the divorced are remarried civilly, they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God's law. Consequently, they cannot receive Holy Communion as long as this situation persists. This norm is not at all a punishment or a discrimination against the divorced and remarried, but rather expresses an objective situation that of itself renders impossible the reception of Holy Communion: '... If these people were admitted to the Eucharist, the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church's teaching about the indissolubility of marriage'.
  • We have to let God's love break through the hard crust of our indifference, our spiritual weariness, our blind conformity to the spirit of this age. Only then can we let it ignite our imagination and shape our deepest desires. That is why prayer is so important: daily prayer, private prayer in the quiet of our hearts and before the Blessed Sacrament, and liturgical prayer in the heart of the Church.
  • There is no evil to be faced that Christ does not face with us. There is no enemy that Christ has not already conquered. There is no cross to bear that Christ has not already borne for us, and does not now bear with us. And on the far side of every cross we find the newness of life in the Holy Spirit, that new life which will reach its fulfillment in the resurrection. This is our faith. This is our witness before the world.
    • Pope John Paul II, Homily of His Holiness John Paul II, Eucharistic Celeberation Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore at Apolstolic Journey to the United States of America on 8 October 1995. Archived from the original on April 16, 2022.

R

[edit]
  • The rubrics call for the altar to be stripped and the removal or veiling of crosses after the liturgy in preparation for Good Friday. Veils should be violet in color. If the font is to be emptied, this may happen at this time also. While the church need not be stripped of furniture and art, generally simplicity should be the norm for Good Friday. Because people remain to pray before the Blessed Sacrament, any work on the environment should be done in silence, particularly if the place of repose is within earshot....The Blessed Sacrament is brought into the sanctuary for Holy Communion along with a fair linen, corporal and candles. These are returned to the altar of repose and the sacristy, respectively after Communion.
    • Robert C. Rabe, et. Al, in "Sourcebook for Sundays, Seasons, and Weekdays 2014: The Almanac for Pastoral...", p. 147

S

[edit]
The crisis that the clergy, the Church, the West and the world are experiencing is radically a spiritual crisis. It is a crisis of faith in God. One cannot say that there is no crisis of faith, when we see clearly that the churches in most European countries are empty. As an example: In Germany, every year, there are 200,000 Catholics who leave the Catholic Church, in parallel, 300,000 Protestants who leave the Protestant church. The decline of faith in the real presence of Jesus Christ is at the heart of the current crisis of the Church and its decline, especially in the West. There is really no longer a belief in the real presence of Jesus Christ. After watching a priest celebrate the mass, one can know if he has the faith or not... When the priest has the Eucharist one can know if he has the faith or not... By how they behave when people come to ask for the Eucharist on the language one can know if he has faith or not, the father who treats them badly (that is, he does not know what he has in his hands). One has frequently said (says George Bernanos), one frequently sees with tears of helplessness, laziness, or pride, that the world is becoming de-Christianized, but the world has not conquered Jesus Christ... It is we who have received it through him , it is from our hearts that God withdraws... It is we who de-Christianize ourselves... miserable...
  • We have to make sure that we always recognize that we don't own the sacraments, the sacraments are the work of Christ. It is he who comes to us ... and it's his grace that takes precedence over everything else. Therefore we should see in each of those encounters with Christ in the sacraments a sacred experience even beyond our comprehension. And the one, of course, that's the supreme of everything is the Eucharist, because that's when Christ sacrificed on Calvary. We're fed with the same food that the disciples were fed at the Last Supper, and the same blood of the covenant from the cross is given to us. So again, it's Christ who is there, Christ offering the sacrifice. We are with him but it is he who does it all, it is he who feeds us.
  • All my sermons are prepared in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. As recreation is most pleasant and profitable in the sun, so homiletic creativity is best nourished before the Eucharist. The most brilliant ideas come from meeting God face to face. The Holy Spirit that presided at the Incarnation is the best atmosphere for illumination. Pope John Paul II keeps a small desk or writing pad near him whenever he is in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament; and I have done this all my life — I am sure for the same reason he does, because a lover always works better when the beloved is with him.
    • Fulton J. Sheen, Treasure in Clay : The Autobiography of Fulton J. Sheen (1980)
  • “The Eucharist has always carried the memory of Jesus’ meals with tax collectors and sinners.”
  • [I]f there be any truer measure of a man, than by what he does, it must be, by what he gives.
    • Robert South, Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions (1727) "Of a Worthy Preparation for the Sacrament of the Eucharist" (Sermon preached at Westminster Abbey, April 8, 1688). Vol. 1, p. 331.

T

[edit]
  • The mystery of our union with God affected by the Eucharist, is a union more intimate than the human mind can conceive.
    • Johannes Tauler, From Our Daily Bread: Glimpsing the Eucharist Through the Centuries by Ralph Wright
  • When our Lord has prepared a person in this unbearable state of misery - for this prepares him much better than all the spiritual practices that all people might be able to accomplish - then our Lord comes and leads him to the third stage. In this stage the Lord removes the cloak from his eyes and reveals the truth to him. Bright sunshine appears and lifts him right out of all his misery. It seems to this person just as though the Lord had raised him from the dead. In this stage the Lord leads a person out of himself into himself. He makes him forget all his former loneliness and heals all his wounds. God draws the person out of his human mode into a divine mode, out of all misery into divine security. Here a person becomes so divinized that everything he is and does God does and is in him. And he is lifted up so far above his natural state that he becomes through Grace what God in his essence is by nature. In this state a person feels and is aware that he has lost himself and does not at all feel himself or is he aware of himself. He is aware of nothing but one simple Being.
    • Johannes Tauler, From Bernard McGinn "John Tauler, Sermon 3" in The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism
  • If any man be well grown in grace, he must needs come [to receive the Eucharist], because he is excellently disposed to so holy a feast: but he that is but in the infancy of piety had need to come, that so he may grow in grace. The strong must come lest they become weak; and the weak that they may become strong. The sick must come to be cured; the healthful to be preserved.
  • Adoration of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament is always to be understood as deriving from the presence of Christ in the actual celebration of the eucharist; adoration is meant to bring us again to the celebration of the eucharist with greater fervor and understanding. So, adoration begins in the celebration of Mass itself. However, in the Mass adoration is primarily to God the Father. It is adoration in “spirit and truth” (John 4:23), that is, adoration of the Father through Christ, the Truth and in the Holy Spirit.
    • Theology at the Eucharistic Table: Master Themes in the Theological Tradition (2003), As tradition and teaching of the Church, in p. 237.
  • The center of eucharistic spirituality is found, of course, in the communal celebration itself; but private prayer and adoration of the blessed sacrament are an excellent means of personally digesting the immense riches of the actual celebration.
    • Theology at the Eucharistic Table: Master Themes in the Theological Tradition (2003), In P. 11.
  • [T]he conciliar debate on Marian devotion influenced the postconcilar debate on celibacy. Devoid of all connotations of sexuality, Mary had long served a twofold purpose in maintaining the discipline of celibacy. First, she provided a justification for a celibate priesthood. The medieval monk Petrus Damiani argued that because Jesus was born of a virgin, he could be touched only by virgin hands, thereby establishing a connection between sexual purity and the Eucharist celebration. Second, she served as a chaste role model and mother figure for priests. Mary, Pius XII wrote, provided the priest solace in his daily struggles against the temptations of the flesh: “When you meet very serious difficulties in the path of holiness and the exercise of your ministry, turn your eyes and your mind trustfully to she who is the Mother of the Eternal Priest and therefore the loving Mother of all Catholic priests.”
    Many bishops and theologians wanted the council to expand Marian doctrinal some supported conferring on Mary a new title, “Mother of the Church.” However, not all council fathers shared this view. Some preferred that piety be more centered on the Bible and the liturgy and less on devotional practices, including Marian worship. They felt that Marian devotion often diverged from the message found in scripture and in the liturgy. They also feared that any elaboration of Marian devotion would undermine the ecumenical movement. Thus, the seemingly innocent question of where to locate a statement on Mary had far-reaching theological and political ramifications. On August 29, by a margin of only forty votes, the council fathers decided in favor of incorporating a statement on Marian piety into ‘’Lumen Gentium’’.
    Although Paul VI later preempted the decision of the council fathers and bestowed upon Mary the title they had denied her, “Mother of the Church,” the popularity of Marian devotion continued to decline in Western-Europe.
  • Faith in the Eucharist is not an easy faith. One cannot use the criterion of knowledge through contact or the experience of the Presence. It is pure faith. This is why I said that the Eucharist is "the testing ground of faith," of our faith. If there is no faith in the Eucharist it is because an approach is lacking to the mystery of the faith.

V

[edit]

W

[edit]
  • Vatican II spoke so strongly about full, conscious, active participation. That was the primary purpose of liturgical renewal. I think we are really missing out on that. Many people come to the Eucharist without much of an idea what it is about. Nor do they have an awareness of their own call, in virtue of their baptism, to participate in the Eucharist. There are probably four places in the documents of the Vatican Council that talk about the baptized offering the Divine Victim to the Father in the Eucharist. I think that 90% of the baptized people don’t really see themselves, in virtue of their baptismal priesthood, as able to offer the Divine Victim to the Father.
  • (About Saint Thomas Christians) They had only three sacraments, baptism, eucharist, and the orders; and would not admit transubstantiation in the manner the Roman Catholics do.
    • Mr. Wrede’s account of Syrian Christians, who contrary to Portuguese belief, followed the doctrine of Nestorius, and acknowledged the Patriarch of that sect residing in Syria, as their ecclesiastical chie quoted from Jain, M. (editor) (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. New Delhi: Ocean Books. Volume IV Chapter16

Films

[edit]
Jane: This impact label was marking his shots. And in this particular case the "X" doesn't mark the spot. His shots are more at the front of the club.
Lisbon: What does that mean?
Jane: Well, it means he was—
La Roche: Slicing them. Coming across the face. Happens when you're feeling stressed. Lisbon, may I speak with you?
Lisbon: We really need to get you a bell.
Cho: Victim's ID badge was in his briefcase. He's a doctor over at Blessed Sacrament.
Jane: [having correctly predicted the victim was a doctor] Oh! You may touch the hem of my garment.
Francine Trent: Are you the CBI agents?
Jane: Yes, she does the detecting and I do the insulting.
Lisbon: Consulting.
Jane: That too.
Lisbon: If there's a group hug coming, I am so outta here.

See also

[edit]
[edit]

Media related to Eucharist on Wikimedia Commons

Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about:


Authority control: WorldCat search
Retrieved from "https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Eucharist&oldid=3754915"