August 1. Thou hast come into the world for the sole purpose of dwelling in the hearts thou hast redeemed with thy blood; may my heart, then, be all thine; take possession of it.  St. Alphonsus Liguori

 

August 2. The love of God may be summed up, condensed, vouched for in the gift that God made me of his Son, that Jesus Christ made me of himself in Holy Communion. I am his end.  He finishes by uniting himself to me! All, then, was for me and me alone! All since the beginning of the world, and before, has prepared that gift of personal love he makes me of his Body, his Blood, his Soul, and his Divinity, of all that he is, all that he has, for all ends in me, in my heart, in my soul.  St. Peter Julian Eymard

 

August 3. The bread and wine with all their properties stop being matter of this world, stop belonging to the world, but become the true body and blood of Christ. This transmutation is accomplished through their unification with the Lord’s spiritual and glorified body that ascended from the world but now appears in them on earth. In the capacity of earthly matter, the eucharistic elements remain bread and wine for the world, whereas, in being transmuted, they already belong to the body of Christ, which is found outside and above the world. And the elements are thereby raised to the metacosmic being of this body and manifest in themselves the corporeality of Christ on earth.  Fr. Sergei Bulgakov

 

August 4. TO SUSTAIN the soul in the pilgrimage of life, God looked over creation, and found nothing that was worthy of it. He then turned to Himself, and resolved to give Himself. O my soul, how great thou art, since nothing less than God can satisfy thee! The food of the soul is the Body and Blood of God! Oh, admirable Food! If we considered it, it would make us lose ourselves in that abyss of love for all eternity!  St. John Vianney

 

August 5. Let us all hasten to the altar rail, and with irresistible eagerness, because now the good Master adds the most marvelous promises to His most lovable invitation: "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood already has eternal life. “  Bl. Frederic Janssoone

August 6. When we approach these mysteries we become a royal purple robe or, rather, the blood and body of the King and — O marvelous wonder! — we are transformed to receive divine adoption, as God’s radiance comes upon us in secret, shines round about us in an extraordinary way, makes us God’s anointed ones, and gives us power, according to the promise, to shine as the sun in the presence of the Father.  St. Gregory Palamas

 

August 7. It is the same body of Christ and the same blood of Christ–on the altar, on the cross and now in heaven.  St. Cajetan

 

August 8. O God, over every living thing which is to spring up, to grow, to flower, to ripen during this day, I say again the words: “This is my body.” And over every death-force which waits in readiness to corrode, to wither, to cut down, I speak again your words which express the supreme mystery of faith: “This is my blood.” On my paten, I hold all who will live this day in vitality, the young, the strong, the healthy, the joy-filled; and in my chalice, I hold all that will be crushed and broken today as that vitality draws its life. I offer you on this all-embracing altar everything that is in our world, everything that is rising and everything that is dying, and ask you to bless it.  Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

 

August 9. When we partake of the sacrifice and receive Holy Communion and are nourished by the flesh and blood of Jesus, we ourselves become his flesh and his blood. And only if and insofar as we are members of his Body, can his spirit quicken and govern us. St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

 

August 10. It is not only the martyrs who share in his passion by their glorious courage; the same is true, by faith, of all who are reborn through baptism. That is why we are to celebrate the Lord’s paschal sacrifice with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. The leaven of our former malice is thrown out, and a new creature is filled and inebriated with the Lord himself. For the effect of our sharing in the body and blood of Christ is to change us into what we receive. As we have died with him, and have been buried and raised to life with him, so we bear him within us, both in body and in spirit, in everything we do.  Pope St. Leo the Great

 

August 11. I pray you, O most gentle Jesus, having redeemed me by baptism from original sin, so now by your precious blood, which is offered and received throughout the world, deliver me from all evils, past, present, and to come.  St. Clare of Assisi

 

August 12. 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.  Pope St. John Paul II

August 13. The Word prepared His Precious and immaculate Body and His Blood, that daily are set forth as a sacrifice on the mystic and Divine table as a memorial of that ever memorable first table of the mysterious supper of the Lord.  St. Hippolytus of Rome

 

August 14.  You come to me and unite Yourself intimately to me under the form of nourishment. Your Blood now runs in mine, Your Soul, Incarnate God, compenetrates mine, giving courage and support. What miracles! Who would have ever imagined such!”  St. Maximilian Kolbe

 

August 15. The most favourable moment at which to obtain graces from Mary is that of Holy Communion, for when she sees us so intimately united with the Body and Blood of her Son, she feels herself on account of this participation, to be more than ever the Mother both of Jesus and of us.  Bl. Ildefonso Schuster

 

August 16. I have drunk My wine with My milk. What wine is this, O Saviour divine, which Thou hast drunk and with which Thou wert so deeply intoxicated as to entirely forget Thyself? It was the overpowering love He bore to men which caused Him to forget that He was God, and think only on their salvation. He was so intoxicated with it, that it is said of Him by a Prophet, that He should be loaded with reproaches, such was the strength of His love. He drank wine with His milk, when He drank His own blood in the supper, which, under the semblance of wine, was virgin milk. The milk, again, was the influx of the Divinity of Christ into His humanity.  Madame Guyon

 

August 17. Infinite bliss, Theotimus, and one which has not been promised only, but of which we have a pledge in the Blessed Sacrament, that perpetual feast of Divine Grace. For in it we receive the blood of Our Savior in his flesh, and his flesh in his blood; his blood being applied unto us by means of his flesh, his substance by his substance to our very corporal mouth; that we may know that so he will apply unto us his divine essence in the eternal feast of his glory. True it is, this favor is done unto us here really but covertly, under Sacramental species and appearances, whereas in heaven, the Divinity will give himself openly, and we shall see him face to face as he is.  St. Francis de Sales

 

August 18. The Church, joined to the Son of God in the exercise of humility and charity, receives from Him the regeneration of the Spirit and water to save souls and restore life, and sends those souls to Heaven.  Therefore she is nobly dowered with His body and blood; for the Only-Begotten of God conferred His body and blood in surpassing glory on His faithful, who are the Church and her children, that through Him they may have life in the celestial city. How?  By giving His body and blood to sanctify those who believe; and so the Heavenly Father delivered Him up to the Passion for the redemption of the peoples and conquered the ancient serpent through Him in humility and justice.  St. Hildegard of Bingen

 

August 19.  Pray that just as our Lord Jesus Christ changes the lower earthly nature of bread and wine into His Body and Blood he might change and transform also the sluggishness, coldness and dryness of our earthly and arid heart into the fire, tenderness and agility of the holy divine affections and dispositions of His divine and heavenly heart.  St. John Eudes

 

August 20. I wish to follow with all my strength the lowly Jesus; I wish Him, who loved me and gave Himself for me, to embrace me with the arms of His love, which suffered in my stead; but I must also feed on the Paschal Lamb, for unless I eat His Flesh and drink His Blood I have no life in me. It is one thing to follow Jesus, another to hold Him, another to feed on Him. To follow Him is a life-giving purpose; to hold and embrace Him a solemn joy; to feed on Him a blissful life.  St. Bernard of Clairvaux

 

August 21.  Both in the host and in the chalice Jesus Christ is whole and entire, because He is living and immortal in the Eucharist as He is in heaven; hence where His Body is, there also are His Blood, His Soul, and His Divinity; and where His Blood is, there also are His Body, His Soul and His Divinity, all these being inseparable in Jesus Christ.  Pope St. Pius X

 

August 22.  Mary, the Mother of God and Queen of heaven sitting before the throne of God above the nine choirs and the seraphim, all filled with love and mercy and interceding for us before God himself who loves us most of all, because in Him is all love, and he gave his body and blood in sacrifice for us upon the Cross. But that body and blood, that sacrifice is daily perpetuated in the churches, and the church herself is there, a great everlasting source of wisdom and consolation.  Fr. Thomas Merton

 

August 23. In the Eucharist where the natural elements of bread and wine are so affirmed that they acquire personal qualities— the Body and Blood of Christ— in the event of the communion of the Holy Spirit. Similarly, in a para-eucharistic way, all forms of true culture and art are ways of treating nature as otherness in communion, and these are the only healthy antidotes to the ecological illness.  Metropolitan John Zizioulas

 

August 24. Let us consume in holy fashion that Body 

which the People pierced with their nails; 

let us drink, as the Medicine of Life,

the Blood which flows from His side. St. Ephrem the Syrian

 

August 25. The Mass is a sacrificial banquet, for in it we partake of the flesh of Christ, which He offered in sacrifice, and of His blood, which He shed for us. From Christ, therefore, we learn that the Mass is a banquet of remembrance and of sacrifice.  Fr. Pius Parsch

 

August 26. When you go up to the holy altar to be filled with its food, behold the sacred body and blood of your God by faith, marvel at it with reverence, taste it with your soul, grasp it with the hand of your heart, and consume it with a draught that is above all interior. St. Caesarius of Arles

 

August 27. She, when the day of her dissolution was near at hand, took no thought to have her body sumptuously covered, or embalmed with spices; nor did she covet a choice monument, or desire her paternal burial-place. These things she entrusted not to us, but only desired to have her name remembered at Your altar, which she had served without the omission of a single day; whence she knew that the holy sacrifice was dispensed, by which the handwriting that was against us is blotted out; by which the enemy was triumphed over, who, summing up our offences, and searching for something to bring against us, found nothing in Him in whom we conquer. Who will restore to Him the innocent blood? Who will repay Him the price with which He bought us, so as to take us from Him? Unto the sacrament of which our ransom did Your handmaid bind her soul by the bond of faith. Let none separate her from Your protection.  St. Augustine of Hippo speaking of St. Monica

 

August 28.   The bread that you see on the altar is the Body of Christ as soon as it is sanctified by God's word. The chalice, or better what is contained in the chalice, is the Blood of Christ as soon as it is sanctified by God's word. St. Augustine of Hippo

 

August 29.  The water and blood which flowed from the side of Jesus on the cross, the water of baptism, the blood of the Eucharist, first fruits of the mystical union between Christ and his Church, are, at the same time, the streams at which that Church is nourished.  Fr. Henri de Lubac

 

August 30. In order to partake of the divine efficacy of the Body and Blood of Christ, a fitting preparation is required, as well as a fervent love and a lively desire, which will unite our souls with the life and death of Christ. Bl. Ildefonso Schuster

 

August 31. This miracle, itself the very greatest of its kind, is accompanied by innumerable other miracles; for here all the laws of nature are suspended; the whole substance of the bread and wine are changed into the Body and the Blood; the species of bread and wine are sustained by the divine power without the support of any underlying substance; the Body of Christ is present in many places at the same time, that is to say, wherever the Sacrament is consecrated. Pope Leo XIII