St. Augustine on Christ Giving His Body to His Disciples

Christ held Himself in His hands when He gave His Body to His disciples.

St. Augustine – 405 A.D.

Mother Teresa on Seeing the Hidden Christ

Unless we believe and see Jesus in the appearance of bread on the altar, we will not be able to see him in the distressing disguise of the poor.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Fr. Al Kimmel on Eucharistic Adoration

It doesn’t matter how vigorously you protest your belief in the eucharistic real presence: if you are not willing and eager to prostrate yourself before the Holy Gifts and adore, worship, and pray to the glorified Lord Jesus Christ, present under the forms of bread and wine, you really do not believe in it.

Fr. Al Kimmel – Pontificator’s Laws

Rev. Edward J. Hayes on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist

After presenting his little daughter with a crucifix on the occasion of her First Holy Communion, the father asked her if she knew the difference between the figure of Jesus on the cross and the Host which the priest holds up at Mass. “When I look at the cross,” the child said, “I see Jesus and he is not there. When I look at the Host, I do not see Jesus and he is there.”

Rev. Edward J. Hayes – Catholicism & Life: Commandments and Sacraments

St. Augustine on Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament

It was in His flesh that Christ walked among us and it is His flesh that He has given us to eat for our salvation; but no one eats of this flesh without having first adored it . . . and not only do we not sin in thus adoring it, but we would be sinning if we did not do so.

St. Augustine – Commentary on Psalm 98

St. Ignatius of Antioch on notions of the Eucharist contrary to the mind of God

But look at the men who have those perverted notions about the grace of Jesus Christ which has come down to us, and see how contrary to the mind of God they are. . . . They even abstain from the Eucharist and from the public prayers, because they will not admit that the Eucharist is the self-same body of our Savior Jesus Christ which flesh suffered for our sins, and which the Father of His goodness raised up again.

St. Ignatius of Antioch (35-107 A.D.)

James T. O’Connor on the Christ’s hard teaching of the Eucharist

“Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ “( Jn 6:52). And “on hearing it, many of his disciples said, ‘This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?’ ” (Jn 6:60)

Through the centuries the Church has consistently refused to mitigate the shock contained in the words of the Lord at Capernaum. Her pedagogy is like her Master’s. Recognize in all its fullness what it is you are expected to believe and pray that the Father will lead you to accept. Let him accept it who can. Dissent to the Church’s teaching is not only a phenomenon of the twentieth century; it has always existed. And this dissent has touched upon not merely secondary issues but frequently upon those most central to the Catholic understanding of Jesus’ message. None more so than the Eucharist. Many have not been able to accept the Mystery as the Church meditated upon it and expounded it more adequately, but their very unwillingness or inability has been the occasion used by the Spirit to deepen the Church’s appreciation for what Jesus meant.

The Hidden Manna – James T. O’Connor

St. Augustine on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist

What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the body of Christ and the chalice is the blood of Christ. This has been said very briefly, which may perhaps be sufficient for faith; yet faith does not desire instruction

St. Augustine – Sermons 272, A.D. 411