God

"Good Friday is the birth of the Church from the pierced side of Jesus.... On the altar of the Cross, the sharing of the broken bread and the common cup at the table of the Last Supper received its full meaning as Supper of the Lamb slain for our redemption. The cross that marks the place of the Eucharist will always call attention to the awesome mystery of Calvary."

"A mystery is something that can never be fully known. There's always more to know about a mystery. And the beautiful thing is, it's a mystery that can capture your whole life. This mystery has the power to not only transform us through an encounter but then actually teach us how to live a eucharistic life, which is a life of self-gift in imitation of Jesus' gift. It makes me want to be able to give myself more and more with, for and in Jesus. It's this mystery that will never be exhausted."

"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."

"So we need to keep growing in our relationship with the one who calls us. So to be with him more, the Lord Jesus, where he is, is the Eucharist, the Word proclaimed, with one another. This is the time for all of us to be one body. Is the time for the laity to take the lead with us clergy to serve the Church and God in our neighbors, to go out of our doors, to widen our tents."

"My proposal is that, given the close theological, spiritual and pastoral relationship between the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Penance, and taking into account the shadows in the latter sacrament's field, a year be dedicated to the Sacrament of Penance."

"We must work for this. Our God is the God of life and life is his gift. In no way can we be among those who work for death, on the contrary we must work for life. The Congress was a call to all men and women to remember we are loved by God and we must love him in return."

"[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."

"Gualtiero Bassetti, Pope Francis calls to check on Italian cardinal in coronavirus ICU (November 12, 2020)"

"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"."

"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."

"by virtue of this sacrament a certain transformation of man into Christ takes place through charity: and this is the proper effect of this sacrament."

"The Eucharist, especially in this difficult period, cannot be left on the margins of our lives but must be returned, with even more strength, to the center of Christian life."

"We have to start at the seminary: give the Eucharist the place of honor in the formation of our future priests. Make them aware, at an early age, that they are the ordinary ministers of the Eucharist and the Eucharist should be the centre of their personal lives. Priests should be reminded often that they are the ordinary minister of the Eucharist who delegate this important ministry of distributing Holy Communion to well prepared lay faithful."

"Experience tells me that when there is great concern about cultivating this intrinsic dynamism in the Eucharistic celebration, the way of our communities and of the individual faithful becomes alive and strong."

"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."

"The more Eucharist we receive, the more we will become like Jesus, so that on this earth we will have a foretaste of Heaven."

"And Christians take even the Eucharist as a type of the glory at which they aim."

"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."

"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."

"For many of our Catholics the Eucharist is above all a meal deriving mainly from the Last Supper on Holy Thursday, and not so much a sacrifice that embraces the whole Paschal Mystery. An in-depth catechesis on the Eucharist as a sacrifice should be imparted to our people who would be able to understand it well in the light of their traditional beliefs."

"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."

"I'm so blessed by the Lord, the way He has revealed Himself to me through His Eucharist, and by the priests who have supported me all these years, and the people."

": Dogma datur Christiánis,"

"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."

"We know that Father Nimatullah lived a holy life. He was a man of prayer, totally 'enraptured by God'. He spent days and nights in meditation, prayer and adoration of the Eucharist. The Virgin Mary was his patron and Father Nimatullah prayed Her Rosary. He was also a very humble, sensitive and patient person who lived his monastic vows of 'obedience, chastity and poverty' to perfection."

"The indrawing attraction drags us out of ourselves, And calls us to be melted away and naughted in the Unity. And in this indrawing attraction we feel that God wills that we should be His, And for this we must abnegate ourselves and let our beatitude be accomplished in Him. But when He attracts us by flowing out towards us, He gives us over to ourselves and makes us free, And sets us in Time."

"“The essence of happiness consists in an act of the intellect.” (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica) … What is implicit in this sentence? This is implicit: the fulfillment of existence takes place in the manner in which we become aware of reality; the whole energy of our being is ultimately directed toward attainment of insight. The perfectly happy person, the one whose thirst has been finally quenched, who has attained beatitude—this person is the one who sees. The happiness, the quenching, the perfection, consists in this seeing."

"When such a spiritual personality passes away, we do not pray for their Satgati (divine beatitude) or Atma Shanti (Supreme Peace). On the contrary, we pray to them for our peace and happiness, for they have attained all that and more even when they are in the physical bodies. Mankind will be ever greatful to Babaji for making their lives more beautiful and worth living. May Babaji's blessing continue to shower on one and all alike!"

"It was truly very good reason that we should be beholden to God only, and to the favour of his grace, for the truth of so noble a belief, since from his sole bounty we receive the fruit of immortality, which consists in the enjoyment of eternal beatitude.... The more we give and confess to owe and render to God, we do it with the greater Christianity."

"Greece had to lose, her pure consciousness had to make our agony only more acute.We needed God loving us in our weakness and not in the glory of beatitude."

"Anchorites used to ill-treat themselves in the way they did, so that the common people would not begrudge them the beatitude they would enjoy in heaven."

"If man’s beatitude consists in the adhering of the human mind to God, perfect beatitude must require a perfect adhering to God. But the human mind cannot adhere perfectly to God through the medium of any creature, whether by way of knowledge or by way of love. All created forms fall infinitely short of representing the divine essence. Objects pertaining to a higher order of being cannot be known through a form belonging to a lower order. For example, a spiritual substance cannot be known through a body, and a heavenly body cannot be known through one of the elements. Much less can the essence of God be known through any created form. Yet, just as we gain a negative insight into higher bodies from a study of lower bodies, thus learning, for instance, that they are neither heavy nor light, and just as we conceive a negative idea about ange’ls from a consideration of bodies, judging that they are immaterial or incorporeal, so by examining creatures we come to know, not what God is, but rather what He is not. Likewise, any goodness possessed by a creature is a definite minimum in comparison with the divine goodness, which is infinite goodness. Hence the various degrees of goodness emanating from God and discerned in things, which are benefits bestowed by God, fail to raise the mind to a perfect love of God. Therefore true and perfect beatitude cannot consist in the adherence of the mind to God through some alien medium."

"Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born (1973)"

"If we could sleep twenty-four hours a day, we would soon return to the primordial slime, the beatitude of that perfect torpor before Genesis-the dream of every consciousness sick of itself."

"Suffering makes us capable of the full force of the Master of Delight; it makes us capable also to bear the utter play of the Master of Power. Pain is the key that opens the gates of strength; it is the high-road that leads to the city of beatitude."

"The eternal fears no future, hopes for no future, but love possesses everything without ceasing, and there is no shadow of variation. As soon as he returns to himself, he understands this no more. He understands what bitter experiences have only all too unforgettably inculcated, the self-accusation, if the past has the kind of claim upon his soul that no repentance can entirely redeem, no trusting in God can entirely wipe out, but only God himself in the inexpressible silence of beatitude. The more of the past a person’s soul can still keep when he is left to himself, the more profound he is."

"Beauty is a reflection of divine beatitude; and since God is Truth, the reflection of His beatitude will be that blend of happiness and truth found in all beauty."

"My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that not enough to fill a man's whole life?"

"The former generations acted under the belief that a shining social prosperity was the beatitude of man, and sacrificed uniformly the citizen to the State. The modern mind believed that the nation existed for the individual, for the guardianship and education of every man. This idea, roughly written in revolutions and national movements, in the mind of the philosopher had far more precision; the individual is the world."

"Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory. They venerate thee as their protector and Patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious power of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude. Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church. Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly conciliate the mercies of the Lord; and beating down the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations."

"In God is my being, my me, my strength, my beatitude, my good, and my delight. I say mine at present because it is not possible to speak otherwise, but I do not mean by it any such thing as me or mine, or delight or good, or strength or stability, or beatitude; nor could I possibly turn my eyes to behold such things in heaven or in the earth; and if, notwithstanding, I sometimes use words which may have the likeness of humility and of spirituality, in my interior I do not understand them, I do not feel them. In truth, it astonishes me that I speak at all, or use words so far removed from the truth and from that which I feel. I see clearly that man in this world deceives himself by admiring and esteeming things which are not, and neither sees nor esteems the things which are"

"Pope Leo XIII, Prayer to Saint Michael (1888)"

"Among us on the earth there is His memory; but in the Kingdom of heaven His very Presence. That Presence is the joy of those who have already attained to beatitude; the memory is the comfort of us who are still wayfarers, journeying towards the Fatherland."

"This is the beatitude that the blessed might have, and yet they have it not, except in so far as they are dead to themselves and absorbed in God. They have it not in so far as they remain in themselves and can say: `I am blessed.' Words are wholly inadequate to express my meaning, and I reproach myself for using them. I would that everyone could understand me, and I am sure that if I could breathe on creatures, the fire of love burning within me would inflame them all with divine desire. O thing most marvelous!"

"Endowed with a spiritual soul, with intellect and with free will, the human person is from his very conception ordered to God and destined for eternal beatitude."

"If, in traditional philosophical thought, it is wisdom – a wisdom built upon knowledge, careful thought, judgment, and so one – that ought to lead to beatitude, then we must recognize that this beatitude has nothing to do with the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. But the banishment of knowledge – any form of knowledge, whether philosophical or scientific, intelligible or sensory – in the process of Christian salvation is not gratuitous but rather is motivated by the very nature of the expected salvation. In order to vanquish the Forgetting that renders the absolute Life Immemorial, the Forgetting in which thought holds Life, we would precisely not ask that of thought. The salvation that consists of rediscovering this absolute Life escapes all orders of knowledge, expertise, and science. It does spring from consciousness as understood by classical or modern thought, as in “consciousness of something.” It is not some “becoming conscious of” that can liberate a person. It is not the consciousness’s progress through various kinds of knowledge that will secure salvation."

"In her later poems, Hadewijch uses striking language and metaphysical themes that were to be further developed by the German mystic Meister Eckhart. She speaks of nakedness and void, of the shedding of the will, of all images and forms in order to attain “pure and naked Nothingness,” so that union with God is no longer experienced as the highest stage of beatitude but as a plunge into boundless unknowing, into the “wild desert” of the Divine Essence. To reach the divine summit, nothing must remain to encumber the spirit: “The circle of things must shrink and be annihilated so that the circle of nakedness can grow and extend in order to embrace the All.” Hadewijch’s language expresses the superabundance of spiritual experience, reflecting her participation in the trinitarian mysteries. She celebrates the divine names: Presence in the Son, Overflow in the Holy Spirit, Totality in the Father. Union with the three persons of the Holy Trinity in active and contemplative life leads to ultimate Unity, to the repose and silence of the soul in the depths of God. There exists an abyss between this experience of spiritual plenitude and her efforts to say something about it Words are utterly insufficient here, yet they must be used to communicate something of the “blessedness of being lost in the fruition of Love” to those who are capable of receiving such a message."

"Dante is eminently the poet of beatitude. He has not only no rival, but none second to him. But if we were asked to name the poet who most nearly deserved this inaccessible proxime accessit, I should name Shelley. Indeed, my claim for Shelley might be represented by the proposition that Shelley and Milton are, each, the half of Dante."

"Robert: The three 6s. Monk: 6 is the sign of the devil. Jennings: But why three 6s? Monk: We think it means the diabolical trinity: the Devil, the Antichrist and the false prophet. Jennings: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Monk: For every holy thing there is an unholy one, that is the essence of temptation."

"καὶ ποιεῖ πάντας, τοὺς μικροὺς καὶ τοὺς μεγάλους, καὶ τοὺς πλουσίους καὶ τοὺς πτωχούς, καὶ τοὺς ἐλευθέρους καὶ τοὺς δούλους, ἵνα δῶσιν αὐτοῖς χάραγμα ἐπὶ τῆς χειρὸς αὐτῶν τῆς δεξιᾶς ἢ ἐπὶ τὸ μέτωπον αὐτῶν, καὶ ἵνα μή τις δύνηται ἀγοράσαι ἢ πωλῆσαι εἰ μὴ ὁ ἔχων τὸ χάραγμα, τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ θηρίου ἢ τὸν ἀριθμὸν τοῦ ὀνόματος αὐτοῦ."