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

July 5

"Anyone who approaches this august sacrament with special devotion...experiences how great is the value of communing with Christ...for there is nothing more effective for advancing on the road to holiness."

-Pope Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei

July 4

"O God, Who in a wonderful Sacrament

hast bequeathed to us the memorial of Thy Passion,

Grant we pray that we may so venerate

the sacred mysteries of Thy Body and Blood,

as to continually experience within us the fruit of Thy Redemption. Amen.”

-Prayer of St. Peter Julian Eymard

July 3

"They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in his goodness, raised up again.”

-St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to Smyrnaeans (110 AD)

July 2

"I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

-John 6:51

July 1

"Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died."

-1 Corinthians 11:23 - 30