Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar

When you approach the table of the heavenly banquet, “examine yourself,” according to the advice of the Apostle (1 Cor 11:28). Consider carefully with what faith you approach. (…) First see what faith you must have in the truth and nature of this Sacrament of the Eucharist. You must believe firmly and without doubt what the Catholic faith teaches and proclaims: at the moment when the words of Christ are pronounced, the material and visible bread in some way pays homage to the Creator and makes way, under the visible appearance accidents, to the living Bread which comes down from heaven for the minister and sacramental service. Material bread ceases to exist and, at the same moment, beneath its accidents, several things truly exist in a prodigious and ineffable way. First the very pure flesh and the sacred body of Christ, which were generated by the operation of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the glorious Virgin Mary, suspended on the cross, deposited in the sepulcher and glorified in heaven. Since the flesh does not live deprived of blood, this precious blood, which flowed on the cross for the salvation of the world, is also necessarily present there. And as there is no true man without a reasonable soul, the glorious soul of Jesus Christ, who surpasses in grace and glory all virtue, all glory and all power, in whom “rest all the treasures of divine wisdom” (Col 2:3), is itself present. Finally, since Christ is true man and true God, God is there in the glory of his majesty. Together and distinguished from each other, these four realities are found whole and perfectly contained under the species of bread and wine; both in the chalice and in the host and no less in one than in the other, so that nothing is lacking in one which must be supplied in the other, and everything is found in each of the two by a mystery “about which we would have many things to say” (cf. Heb 5:11). But it is enough to believe that each species contains the true God and Man, surrounded by the help of Angels and the presence of Saints.

Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team

“John the Baptist proclaimed: ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand'” (Mt 3:2)… O blessed John, who desired that conversion precede judgment, that sinners should not be condemned but rewarded, that the unrighteous should enter the Kingdom and not undergo punishment… When did John preach this nearness of the Kingdom of heaven? The world was still in its infancy…; but for us who are announcing this nearness today, the world is extremely antiquated and worn out. It has lost its strength, lost its faculties, suffering weighs it down…, it cries out its exhaustion, it bears all the symptoms of its end… We are being towed along by a world that passes away, forgetting the world to come. We are greedy for present things but do not take into account the coming judgment. We will not run to meet the Lord as he comes… Let us turn back, brethren, let us turn back… By the very fact of his delay, of his still waiting, our Lord proves his desire to see us come back to him, his desire that we should not perish. In his great goodness he continues addressing these words to us: “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked but would rather that they change their ways and live” (Ez 33:11). So let us turn back to him, brethren, not fearing that time is running short. The time that belongs to time’s Author cannot be shortened. The proof of it lies in the criminal in the Gospel who, at the moment of dying on the cross, got away with his pardon, grabbed hold of life and, breaking into paradise like a burglar, managed to make his way into the Kingdom (cf. Lk 23:43)!

Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team