September 1. Christian: you have seen all of the words that bear upon the establishment of this mystery. What simplicity! What precision in these words! He leaves nothing to be interpreted or commented upon. If there is any commentary to be made upon them at all, it is only to remark that according to the force of the original Greek, we ought to render it thus: “This is my body, my very body; the same body that is given for you. This is my blood, my very blood, the blood of the new covenant; the blood poured out for you in remission of your sins.” … There is the commentary we require. What simplicity, what precision, what force do these words have!  Jacques-Benigne Bossuet

 

September 2. At no time may the spiritual building of the Body of Christ, which charity effects, be implored more opportunely than when Christ’s Body, the Church, in the sacrament of the bread and of the chalice, offers the very Body and Blood of Christ. St. Fulgentius of Ruspe

 

September 3. With the same power with which our Creator has created everything out of nothing and has built for Himself a body from the flesh of the Virgin, He changes bread and wine through the sanctification of His Spirit into flesh and blood.  St. Gregory the Great

 

September 4. Celebrate the Eucharist as follows: Say over the cup: “We give you thanks, Father, for the holy vine of David, your servant, which you made known to us through Jesus your servant. To you be glory for ever”. Over the broken bread say: “we give you thanks, Father, for the life and the knowledge which you have revealed to us through Jesus your servant. To you be glory for ever. As this broken bread scattered on the mountains was gathered and became one, so too, may your Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom. For glory and power are yours through Jesus Christ for ever.”  When you finish the meal, offer thanks in this manner: …. “Almighty ruler, you created all things for the sake of your name; you gave men food and drink to enjoy so that they might give you thanks. Now you have favored us through Jesus your servant with spiritual food and drink as well as with eternal life. Above all we thank you because you are mighty. To you be glory for ever.”  Didache

 

September 5. Put your sins in the chalice for the precious blood to wash away. One drop is capable of washing away the sins of the world.  St. Teresa of Kolkata

 

September 6. THE Catholic Church presents to men the Blessed Sacrament as the answer of the deep cry of the soul after love. She tells us, that in Holy Communion is received God entire—the body and blood, the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. . . . There is another reason why God should give Himself to man. It is this: whatever is received as food, must in some way partake of the life it goes to support or sustain; otherwise, starvation and death follow. This is a loss of all attraction and life. Now, in the Christian soul, there is a divine life; a divine food, therefore, is necessary for its support, growth and perfection.  Fr.  Isaac Hecker

 

September 7. To eat Christ’s flesh, to drink his blood, to eat him, to absorb into ourselves the living God – it is beyond any wish we might be capable of forming for ourselves, yet it satisfies to the full what we long for, - of necessity long for, - from the bottom of our souls.  Fr. Romano Guardini

 

September 8. Receiving [the Eucharist], we commune of the Body and Blood of the Lord, but also co-commune of the humanity (the “body and blood”) of the Mother of God, in its “Chalcedonian” indivisibility with the Son.  Fr. Sergei Bulgakov

 

September 9. All debts are to be wiped out: the Lord redeems them with his blood. We were slaves, and he has paid the price of our freedom. We sit at the Lord’s table now, as free men, and take our nourishment from the holy bread and wine, although we have not yet their fullness. Sr. Aemiliana Lohr 

 

September 10. The sacrament of the body of Christ, as much as it looks to the Lord Christ himself who was immolated upon the cross, is his flesh, which we receive in the sacrament covered in the form of bread, and is his blood, which we drink under the taste and appearance of wine. The flesh is the sacrament of the flesh, and the blood is the sacrament of the blood. In the flesh and the blood, both of which are invisible, intelligible, spiritual, there is signified the body of the Redeemer, which is visible, palpable, manifestly full of every grace and virtue and the divine majesty. When the first is broken and divided up unto the salvation of the people, and the other is poured from the chalice and received by the mouth of the faithful, his death upon the cross and the blood flowing from his side are symbolized. Lanfranc of Canterbury

 

September 11.  Parents will their possessions to their children, but Jesus Christ gives us in His testament not temporal goods, but He bequeaths to us His most adorable body and His most Precious Blood. O, the good fortune of the Christian, how little it is appreciated! No, dear brethren, His love could have done no more than to give Himself to us; for when we receive Him, we receive Him with all His riches.  St. John Vianney

 

September 12.  May Mary, who bearing Jesus in her womb was the first living "tabernacle" of the Eucharist, communicate to us her same faith in the holy mystery of the Body and Blood of her divine Son, so that it may truly be the centre of our life.  Pope Benedict XVI

 

September 13. As spotless as the sunbeam should be the hand that breaks that Body, the mouth that is to be filled with this spiritual Fire, the tongue that is stained by this awesome Blood! Consider with what honor you have been honored; at what Table you feast. That which the Angels tremble to behold, and dare not gaze upon because of Its flashing brightness. It is with This we are nourished, to This we are joined; made one Body and one Flesh with Christ.  St. John Chrysostom

 

September 14 (Exaltation of the Holy Cross).  The Cross is effectively redemptive for mankind only insofar as men associate themselves with it through the eucharistic eating of his flesh and his blood. The life-giving Spirit will become their own spirit only insofar as they will adhere by faith to the Word who proposes that flesh and blood to them, i.e., insofar as they make the very “Eucharist” of the Son their own.  Fr. Louis Bouyer

 

September 15.  If we do not see in the Mass, as Mary did on Calvary, the torn Body of Christ and the Blood flowing from  His wounds, we do have, by virtue of the Consecration, the  real presence of this Body and Blood. Moreover, as this  divine presence becomes actualized under two distinct  species, the bloody death on Calvary is mystically renewed  by the real separation of the Body and Blood of the Savior. Ven. Pope Pius XII 

 

September 16. When the Lord, in speaking of bread which is produced by the compacting of many grains of wheat, refers to it as His Body, He is describing our people whose unity He has sustained, and when He refers to wine pressed from many grapes and berries, as His Blood, He is speaking of our flock, formed by the fusing of many united together.  St. Cyprian of Carthage

 

September 17.  The same power of the Most High which effected the body in the womb of the Virgin, transforms upon the altar at the words of the priest the oblation of bread and wine into the sacrament of flesh and blood. Therefore appear also the nativity, the passion, the burial, the resurrection and the ascension of the Son of the heavenly Father in the same Sacrament.  St. Hildegard of Bingen

 

September 18. Let it not be said that Christ instituted for you in vain the Sacrament of His love. Let it not appear as though the Church was obliged to force you to that heavenly banquet by her holy commandment. Come to it rather with strong faith and eager love and deep gratitude, that the body and blood of the Lord may be for you indeed a remedy unto the remission of your sins and an earnest of your future entrance into life everlasting. St. Robert Bellarmine

 

September 19. You drew all things to yourself so that the whole human race could worship you in spirit and in truth, a worship celebrated everywhere in sacramental form, a worship that fulfills and proclaims what you enacted by offering your own body and blood. No other victim is needed. St. Alonso de Orozco

 

September 20. Once at Emmaus two disciples recognized Christ in the breaking of the bread. On Korean soil may ever new disciples recognize him in the Eucharist. Receive his Body and Blood under the appearances of bread and wine, and may the Redeemer of the world receive you into the union of his Body, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ has risen from the dead and is living in his Church.  Pope St. John Paul II

 

September 21. Jesus gave us the Eucharist as a constant memory of his life and death. Not a memory that simply makes us think of him but a memory that makes us members of his body. That is why Jesus on the evening before he died took bread saying, “This is my Body,” and took the cup saying, “This is my Blood.” By eating the Body and drinking the Blood of Christ, we become one with him.  Fr. Henri Nouwen

 

September 22. Christ unites us in the Church, the community of those who believe and love, which is his body, by giving himself to us in the elements of bread and wine, the perfect signs of his body and blood. In this meal, the word God speaks to us, the word of eternal love, becomes radiantly present in our darkness. In this sacrifice, Christ, who has given himself for us once and for all, is presented as the Church’s gift to the eternal God.  Fr. Karl Rahner

 

September 23. I am going to the wine-press of the Church, to the holy altar, where from the Blood of that delightful and unusual Grape, is distilled the sacred Wine with which only a few fortunate people are permitted to become inebriated.  St. Pio of Pietrelcina

 

September 24. Look, O Lord, upon Thy faithful people, who bend before Thee, and await Thy gift, and contemplate the deposit of the Sacraments of Thy Only-begotten, O God the Father. Take not away Thy grace from us, and cast us not away from Thy ministry, and from participation in Thy sacraments, but prepare us, that we may be pure and without flaw, and worthy of this feast; and that, with a conscience unblameable, we may ever enjoy His precious body and blood; and in a life, glorious and endless, may recline in a spiritual habitation, and may feast at the table of Thy kingdom, and may render to Thee glory and praise. Liturgy of St. Dionysius the Areopagite

 

September 25.  Christ has truly and perfectly given Himself to us, even visibly uniting and incorporating the Church in Himself by the wonderful sacrament of His body and blood. So signal is the grace He has conferred that He is the head of the Church, and the Church is His body, not in name only, but in all truth embodied in His very body. There can be no cleavage of grace in that body with which the sacrament of singular unity has consolidated us. Thus it is certain that with Him and through Him we shall obtain a like glory of dignity in eternal life, if with Him and through Him we strive to preserve a like grace of innocence in this life.  Alger of Liege

 

September 26. The Fathers took special care to warn the faithful that in reflecting on this most august Sacrament, they should not trust to their senses, which reach only the properties of bread and wine, but rather to the words of Christ which have power to transform, change and transmute the bread and wine into His Body and Blood. For, as those same Fathers often said, the power that accomplishes this is that same power by which God Almighty, at the beginning of time, created the world out of nothing.  Pope St. Paul VI

 

September 27. Be united together and God will bless you; but may this be by the charity of Jesus Christ, because all other union which is not consolidated by the blood of this Divine Savior cannot subsist. It is then in Jesus Christ, by Jesus Christ, and for Jesus Christ that you should all be united with one another. St. Vincent de Paul

 

September 28.  Let every hesitation of unbelief withdraw since the author of the gift [Christ] is himself also the witness to the truth.  For the invisible priest, by a mysterious power of his word changes visible created things into the substance of his body and blood saying thus: “Take and Eat: this is my body”! and repeating the sanctification, “take and drink, this is my blood”…. the created things placed on the altar, before being consecrated by the invocation of his name are the substance of bread and wine; after the words of Christ, they are the Body and Blood of Christ.  St. Faustus of Riez

 

September 29.  In humble prayer we ask you, almighty God: command that these [Eucharistic] gifts be borne by the hands of your holy Angel to your altar on high in the sight of your divine majesty, so that all of us, who through this participation at the altar receive the most holy Body and Blood of your Son, may be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing.  Through Christ our Lord. Amen.  Roman Canon

 

September 30. After the type had been fulfilled by the passover celebration and He had eaten the flesh of the lamb with His Apostles, He takes bread which strengthens the heart of man, and goes on to the true Sacrament of the passover, so that just as Melchisedech, the priest of the Most High God, in prefiguring Him, made bread and wine an offering, He too makes Himself manifest in the reality of His own Body and Blood.  St. Jerome