Quotations on Sacrament
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
Christ held Himself in His hands when He gave His Body to His disciples saying: ‘This is My Body.’ No one partakes of this Flesh before he has adored it.”
–St. Augustine
In China we use the word baptism a lot, it’s a very revolutionary word.
–Joan Chen (Chinese actress and director, b. 1961)
Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament… There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death. By the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste -or foretaste- of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man’s heart desires.
The only cure for sagging or fainting faith is Communion. Though always Itself, perfect and complete and inviolate, the Blessed Sacrament does not operate completely and once for all in any of us. Like the act of Faith it must be continuous and grow by exercise. Frequency is of the highest effect. Seven times a week is more nourishing than seven times at intervals.
–J.R.R.Tolkien, in a letter to his son, circa 1941
Any ritual is an opportunity for transformation.
-Starhawk (American feminist, author of The Earth Path, columnist)
After all, I passed on to you what I had received from the Lord. On the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread and spoke a prayer of thanksgiving. He broke the bread and said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this to remember me.”
1 Cor 11:23–24 (God’s Word translation)
The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
We should never again use the expression, ‘When Jesus was on earth’ or think of Him as being only in heaven, Jesus is still on earth While all the sacraments confer grace, the Eucharist contains the author of grace, Jesus Christ Himself.
–Father John Hardon, (Founder of the Marian Catechist Apostolates)
From childhood on I have had the dream of life lived as a sacrament… the dream implied taking life ritually as something holy.
–Bernard Berenson (American historian 1865-1959)
When you look at the Crucifix, you understand how much Jesus loved you then. When you look at the Sacred Host you understand how much Jesus loves you now.
–Mother Teresa
I hope to have communion with the people, that is the most important thing.
–Pope John Paul II
There will also be some people who concentrate their attention on the rituals of worship and the offerings being made, such as the breaking of coconuts, the waving of lamps and incense, and the devotion expressed through these rituals. The number of people with this kind of vision and interest will be much smaller than those who concentrate on the decorations, the dances and dramas and all the external paraphernalia associated with the festival.
–Sri Sathya Sai Baba, (Indian spiritual leader, b.1926)
There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.
–M. F. K. Fisher (American writer 1908-1992)
Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.
–Ira Gershwin
Water brings life, it refreshes, purifies, regenerates, bears fruit and also reminds us of our own baptism.
–Phillip Saunders (Australian Anglican dean)
If we but paused for a moment to consider attentively what takes place in this Sacrament, I am sure that the thought of Christ’s love for us would transform the coldness of our hearts into a fire of love and gratitude.
–St. Angela of Foligno
People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
–Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, poet and peace activist. b.1926)
Female beauty is an important Minor Sacrament which cannot be received too often; I am not at all sure that neglect of it does not constitute a sin of some kind.
–Robertson Davies (Canadian author, 1913-1995)
There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming relationship, communion, or company than a good marriage.
–Martin Luther
When we acknowledge that all of life is sacred and that each act is an act of choice and therefore sacred, then life is a sacred dance lived consciously each moment. When we live at this level, we participate in the creation of a better world.
–Scout Cloud Lee
Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.
–Joseph Campbell
Mere formal worship or mechanical routine performance of rituals cannot induce God to recite in the heart.
–Sri Sathya Sai Baba, (Indian spiritual leader, b.1926)
Burn away those rituals which lead you to forget the Beloved Lord.
–Guru Gobind Singh (Sikh religious leader & conqueror 1666-1708)
Wonder is the basis of worship
–Thomas Carlyle
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
–Albert Einstein
The culmination of the Mass is not the consecration, but Communion.
–St. Maximilian Kolbe
Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.
–Thomas Jefferson
Ritual is the way you carry the presence of the sacred. Ritual is the spark that must not go out.
–Christina Baldwin
The Eucharist is the Sacrament of Love; It signifies Love, it produces Love.
–Thomas Aquinas
To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
–W. Somerset Maugham
Creeds, ritual, religion and different theologies are all derived from man’s yearning for the vast Reality beyond — and flow in the thousand different forms, fertilizing many fields, calming many communities, refreshing tired people and, at last, carrying people to the ocean of Bliss.
–Sri Sathya Sai Baba, (Indian spiritual leader, b.1926)
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh. This is a great sacrament; but I speak in Christ and in the church.
–Eph 5:33-34 (Douay-Rheims Bible)
Love is not weakness. It is strong. Only the sacrament of marriage can contain it.
–Boris Pasternak
There is something in the eloquence of the pulpit, when it is really eloquence, which is entitled to the highest praise and honor. The preacher who can touch and affect such a heterogeneous mass of hearers, on subjects limited, and long worn thread-bare in all common hands; who can say anything new or striking, any thing that rouses the attention, without offending the taste, or wearing out the feelings of his hearers, is a man who one could not honour enough.
–Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
