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Top Quotes: Jesus—Eucharist (Last Updated: 30th Sept 2020)(Full quotes and sources below)

1. “I am the living bread which came down from heaven.” (Jesus)
2. “I am the bread of life. No one who comes to me will ever hunger; no one who believes in me will ever thirst.” (Jesus)
3. “As the living Father sent me and I draw life from my Father, so whoever eats me will also draw life from me.” (Jesus)
4. “Jesus wants to live in you. He wants to speak to you in your heart.” (Pope John-Paul II)
5. “When the priest says “the Body of Christ”, we say “amen”: but let it be an “amen” that comes from the heart, a committed one. It is Jesus; it is Jesus who saved me; it is Jesus who comes to give me the strength to live.” (Pope Francis)
6. “When you’re at Mass you’re at the foot of Calvary. Think about that. Be struck by it. This is Jesus dying in front of you again. When the bell rings is the moment Jesus is present. Every Mass makes present—not ‘repeats’—the sacrifice at Calvary. At every Mass God pushes aside time and space and makes present the Hill of Calvary.” (Fr Eamon Devlin)
7. “Jesus humbles himself just as He did when He came from His heavenly throne into the Virgin’s womb.” (St Francis of Assisi)
8. “Changing himself into bread, he became totally at our disposal so that, having been fed by him, we would feel the strength necessary to give ourselves to others.” (Mother Teresa)
9. “We come together to  offer our worship and our homage to God our Creator, and to unite ourselves with Jesus our Saviour, who offers himself to the Father in the spirit, and the Father responds by giving us the gift of his Son as food for our journey in word and in sacrament.” (Fr Eamon Devlin)
10. “The Mass is the work of Jesus, his Last Supper made actual. In it, it seems that we plug into the divine energy and are lifted out of the pettiness of self into the infinite love of the Son for his Father.” (Sr Wendy Beckett)
11. “What happens depends simply and only on faith and the choice we make to surrender ourselves to Jesus.” (Sr Wendy Beckett)
12. “Because this gift is so freely given, there is a danger that we take it for granted. I think if mass were rationed, if it were said once a decade or even perhaps only once a year, people would come trembling and in awe.” (Sr Wendy Beckett)
13. “Ask not what God can do for you but what you can do for God. That’s the meaning of the Mass.” (Fr Eamon Devlin)
14. “Place yourself in the arms and near the heart of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and then leave all to him. He will form you, he will open your eyes, he will teach you all that you must do.” (Pope John XXIII)
15. “For each one of us the Eucharist is a call to ever greater effort, so that we may live as true followers of Jesus…. The Eucharist is also a great call to conversion. We know that it is an invitation to the banquet…. If we receive it as such a call, such an invitation, it brings forth in us its proper fruits. It transforms our lives.” (Pope John-Paul II)
16. “The Eucharist is Jesus himself who gives himself entirely to us. Nourishing ourselves of Him and abiding in Him through Eucharistic Communion, if we do so with faith, transforms our life, transforms it into a gift to God and to our brothers and sisters.” (Pope Francis)
17. “Nourishing ourselves of that Bread of Life’ means entering into harmony with the heart of Christ, assimilating his choices, his thoughts, his behaviour. It means entering into a dynamism of love and becoming people of peace, people of forgiveness, of reconciliation, of sharing in solidarity. The very things that Jesus did.” (Pope Francis)
18. “Jesus gave the Eucharist to us at Passover time, a time of celebration when Jews recall being saved by God. The Mass is a celebration of freedom. It’s the celebration of deliverance, it’s a bloody act of delivering us from all that enslaves us. Jesus was saying there’s a new Passover—with me as the lamb. Ask God to deliver you from all that’s burdening you, enslaving you. God will do it. Because you’re at the spot and moment when God’s son gave himself to God for us.” (Fr Eamon Devlin)
19. “So it’s not ‘getting the Mass’—which sounds like getting the groceries!—and not ‘being at Mass’, but it’s ‘living the Mass.’ The Mass is an invitation to sacrifice, to self-giving, and to self-denial. Give some sacrifice to the Lord to tie with his sacrifice so he can transform us and make us into ‘another Christ.'” (Fr Eamon Devlin
20. “The Eucharist is a call to become, more and more, what we receive.” (Archbishop Malcolm McMahon)
21. “I would recommend that after receiving Communion we focus on the fact we and Jesus are one, we in him and he in us. We become conscious of him; bringing us to the Father, praying to the Father within us, and of course in him uniting us with the whole of creation.” (Michel de Verteuil)
22. “Saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the wrong track, and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor—that is the only way out of our ‘hole’. This process of surrender—what Christians call repentance—means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death…. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we share in God’s dying.” (CS Lewis)
23. “The Eucharist contains and carries many deep realities: It helps continue the incarnation of God in history, it is God’s physical embrace, it is an intensification of our community together as Christians, it is the new manna which God gives to nurture his people, it is our family meal together as believers, it is Christ’s sacrifice which we commemorate ritually…” (Fr Ron Rolheiser)
24. “God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why he uses material things like bread and wine to put new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: he invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.” (CS Lewis)

 Jesus—Eucharist: Full Quotes & Sources of Quotes

“I am the bread of life.
No one who comes to me will ever hunger;
no one who believes in me will ever thirst.”

— Jesus (John 6: 35, the New Jerusalem Bible translation)

“As the living Father sent me and I draw life from my Father,
so whoever eats me will also draw life from me.”

— Jesus (John 6: 57, the New Jerusalem Bible translation)

“I am the living bread which came down from heaven;
if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever;
and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

—Jesus, in the Gospel of John (Jn 6:51)

“And now I would like to speak to these little ones who are about to receive Holy Communion for the first time.
Dear children: Jesus is coming to you in a new way today, in a special way. He wants to live in you. He wants to speak to you in your heart. He wants to be with you all through your day.

Jesus comes to you in the Eucharist so that you will live for ever. Holy Communion is not ordinary food. It is the bread of eternal life. It is something more precious than gold or silver. It is worth more than anything you can imagine. For this sacred bread is the body and blood of Jesus. And Jesus promises you that if you eat his flesh and drink his blood, you will have life in you and you will live for ever.

You come to the altar today with faith and prayer. Promise me that you will try to stay close to Jesus always, and never turn your back on him. As you grow older, go on learning about Jesus by listening to his word and by talking to him in prayer. If you stay close to him, you will always be happy.”

— Pope John Paul II, Mass at Cardiff, 2nd June, 1982, as published on page 15 of “The Pope in Britain: Collected Homilies & Speeches” St Paul Publications, 1982

“Not to go to communion is like someone dying of thirst beside a spring.”

— St. John Vianney, the Curé d’Ars, 1786-1859 (as quoted on an official poster at the International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, 2012)(click here for the full ‘Eucharistic Meditations of the Curé d’Ars‘ [page 11 for this quote])

The feast of Corpus Christi invites us to renew each year the wonder and joy of this wondrous gift of the Lord which is the Eucharist. Let us receive it with gratitude, not in a passive, habitual way. We should not grow accustomed to the Eucharist and go to Communion as a habit: no! Each time we approach the altar to receive the Eucharist, we must truly renew our “amen” to the Body of Christ. When the priest says “the Body of Christ”, we say “amen”: but let it be an “amen” that comes from the heart, a committed one. It is Jesus; it is Jesus who saved me; it is Jesus who comes to give me the strength to live. It is Jesus, the living Jesus. But we must not become accustomed: each time as if it were the first Communion.

— Pope Francis, Angelus address, 23 June 2019  http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/angelus/2019/documents/papa-francesco_angelus_20190623.html

“When you’re at Mass you’re at the foot of Calvary. Think about that. Be struck by it. This is Jesus dying in front of you again. When the bell rings is the moment Jesus is present. Every Mass makes present—not ‘repeats’—the sacrifice at Calvary. At every Mass God pushes aside time and space and makes present the Hill of Calvary.”

— Fr Eamon Devlin, CM

“Receiving communion it is not like picturing with the imagination, as when we reflect upon the Lord on the cross… In Communion the event is happening now and it is entirely true.”

— St Teresa of Avila, in her ‘The Way of Perfection’ as quoted on page 87 of “A Little Book of Teresa of Avila”, the Columba Press, Blackrock, County Dublin, 2003, compiled by Don Mullan

“Everyday, Jesus humbles himself just as He did when He came from His heavenly throne into the Virgin’s womb; everyday He comes to us and lets us see Him in abjection, when He descends from the bosom of the Father into the hands of the priest at the altar.”

— St. Francis of Assisi

“Christ changed himself into the bread of life. Changing himself into bread, he became totally at our disposal so that, having been fed by him, we would feel the strength necessary to give ourselves to others.”

— Mother Teresa

“We come together to  offer our worship and our homage to God our Creator, and to unite ourselves with Jesus our Saviour, who offers himself to the Father in the spirit, and the Father responds by giving us the gift of his Son as food for our journey in word and in sacrament. And so for these gifts we are grateful and ask the Lord to help us to grasp them more deeply not only in the course of our daily Mass but also in the events of our daily lives.”

— Fr Eamon Devlin, CM, at Mass Opening in St Peter’s in Phibsboro Sunday 21^st June 2020 (as streamed on churchservices.tv: https://www.churchservices.tv/phibsboro/archive/recordings/kwubZ278NVjvca5)

“The Mass is the work of Jesus, his Last Supper made actual. In it, it seems that we plug into the divine energy and are lifted out of the pettiness of self into the infinite love of the Son for his Father…. I love what CS Lewis said, that we are told to ‘take and eat’ not ‘take and understand.’ None of us can ‘understand’—the mystery is beyond our comprehension, but I am certain that something profoundly real happens at mass…. What happens depends simply and only on faith and the choice we make to surrender ourselves to Jesus…. Because this gift is so freely given, there is a danger that we take it for granted. I think if mass were rationed, if it were said once a decade or even perhaps only once a year, people would come trembling and in awe.”

— Sister Wendy Beckett in ‘Sister Wendy On Prayer’

“After having received the Lord, since you have the Person himself present, strive to close the eyes of the body and open those of the soul and look into your own heart.”

— St Teresa of Avila, in her ‘The Way of Perfection’ as quoted on page 88 of “A Little Book of Teresa of Avila”, the Columba Press, Blackrock, County Dublin, 2003, compiled by Don Mullan

“Ask not what God can do for you but what you can do for God. That’s the meaning of the Mass. But we’ve done the opposite.”

— Fr Eamon Devlin, CM

“In a word, place yourself in the arms and near the heart of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and then leave all to him. He will form you, he will open your eyes, he will teach you all that you must do.”

— Pope John XXIII in his ‘Little Rules etc” written about 1895, as published in his autobiography ‘Journal of a Soul’, 1980 revised edition published by Geoffrey Chapman of London & NY, page 434

“For each one of us the Eucharist is a call to ever greater effort, so that we may live as true followers of Jesus: truthful in our speech, generous in our deeds, concerned, respectful of the dignity and rights of all persons, whatever their rank or income, self-sacrificing, fair and just, kind, considerate, compassionate, and self-controlled—looking to the well-being of our families, our young people, our country, Europe and the world.” (p.101)…. “The Eucharist is also a great call to conversion. We know that it is an invitation to the banquet; that, by nourishing ourselves on the Eucharist, we receive in it the body and blood of Christ, under the appearances of bread and wine. Precisely because of this invitation, the Eucharist is and remains the call to conversion. If we receive it as such a call, such an invitation, it brings forth in us its proper fruits. It transforms our lives.” (p.107)

— Pope John-Paul II in Ireland 1979, as quoted in ‘Twenty-Five Years On: A Message for Today’, 2004, Dublin: Veritas, pages 101 and 107.

“The Eucharist is Jesus himself who gives himself entirely to us. Nourishing ourselves of Him and abiding in Him through Eucharistic Communion, if we do so with faith, transforms our life, transforms it into a gift to God and to our brothers and sisters. Nourishing ourselves of that “Bread of Life” means entering into harmony with the heart of Christ, assimilating his choices, his thoughts, his behaviour. It means entering into a dynamism of love and becoming people of peace, people of forgiveness, of reconciliation, of sharing in solidarity. The very things that Jesus did.

Jesus concludes his discourse with these words: “he who eats this bread will live for ever” (Jn 6:58). Yes, living in real communion with Jesus on this earth lets us pass from death to life. Heaven begins precisely in this communion with Jesus.

In Heaven Mary our Mother is already waiting for us — we celebrated this mystery yesterday. May she obtain for us the grace to nourish ourselves with faith in Jesus, Bread of Life.”

— Pope Francis in his Angelus address in St Peter’s Square, Sunday 16 August 2015 as published on the Vatican website https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/angelus/2015/documents/papa-francesco_angelus_20150816.html

‘I look at him and he looks at me.’

— The celebrated response of a peasant in the then village of Ars in France to his Curé, St. John Vianney, when asked what he was doing while sitting in the church before the tabernacle for hours on end

“In the humble signs of bread and wine, changed into his body and blood, Christ walks beside us as our strength and our food for the journey, and he enables us to become, for everyone, witnesses of hope. If, in the presence of this mystery, reason experiences its limits, the heart, enlightened by the grace of the Holy Spirit, clearly sees the response that is demanded, and bows low in adoration and unbounded love.”

— Pope John-Paul II, Encyclical on the Eucharist, 2003

“Jesus gave the Eucharist to us at Passover time, a time of celebration when Jews recall being saved by God. The Mass is a celebration of freedom. It’s the celebration of deliverance, i.e. it’s a bloody act of delivering us from all that enslaves us. Jesus was saying there’s a new Passover—with me as the lamb. We need deliverance from fear, from problems we can do nothing about, from anger, from relationships gone wrong, from lack of faith, etc etc. What I need deliverance from changes day by day. Ask God to deliver you from yourself, from all that’s burdening you, enslaving you. God will do it. Because you’re at the spot and moment when God’s son gave himself to God for us. Give yourself in the Mass.”

— Fr Eamon Devlin, CM

“At Mass we say, ‘Pray that our sacrifice may be acceptable.’ Jesus gives himself totally. What is my/your sacrifice? What sacrifice, if any, are you bringing to the Mass? Or are you just there out of habit?

There exist endless opportunities every day to make sacrifice; e.g. a principled decision you’re standing by, whether popular or not; e.g. times where you’re called to great patience, these are calls to sacrifice; e.g. “I’ll let that person speak to me and I’ll listen as if for the first time.”

You can’t live in the real world and not be called to sacrifice every day. This makes the Mass come alive for you…. The reason the Mass is dead for so many is because so many have lost touch of sacrifice in their daily living. Nowadays it’s all about fulfilling yourself and “Because you’re worth it”. Sacrifice is seen as a negative: it’s not. It’s the deepest part of our humanity because it puts us in touch with divinity. The Cross and the Eucharist are the one and the same thing. The Lord’s giving of himself at both brings about a meeting of heaven and earth.

…. So it’s not ‘getting the Mass’—which sounds like getting the groceries!—and not ‘being at Mass’, but it’s ‘living the Mass.’ The Mass is an invitation to sacrifice, to self-giving, and to self-denial. Give some sacrifice to the Lord to tie with his sacrifice so he can transform us and make us into ‘another Christ.’”

— Fr Eamon Devlin, CM

“If we truly understand the Eucharist; if we make the Eucharist the central focus of our lives; if we feed our lives with the Eucharist, we will not find it difficult to discover Christ, to love him, and to serve him in the poor.”

— Mother Teresa

“The Eucharist is a call to become, more and more, what we receive…. I remember the late Father Paul O’Leary, OP, deeply impressed me when he said that sharing the consecrated bread among Christians placed on them an imperative to share unblessed bread with those who do not know Jesus as we do. The essence of our vocation, as a Eucharistic people, is to go out to all our sisters and brothers and share with them the bread of our companionship; to offer the cup of kindness and refreshment; to be bearers of the basin and towel of selfless service.”

—Archbishop Malcolm McMahon of Liverpool, OP, in the ‘Magnificat’ magazine, page 131 of the World Meeting of Families 2018 edition

“Come to communion, my brothers and sisters, come to Jesus. Come to live from him in order to live with him. Of course you are not worthy of him, but you need him!”

— The Curé d’Ars, St John Vianney, patron saint of parish priests, as quoted by Pope Benedict in a 2009 letter proclaiming a year for priests

“Saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the wrong track, and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor—that is the only way out of our ‘hole’. This process of surrender—what Christians call repentance—means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death…. Supposing God became a man. Then that person could help us. He could surrender his will, and suffer and die, because he was man, and he could do it perfectly because he was God. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we share in God’s dying.”

— CS Lewis

“The best means to reach perfection is through receiving Holy Communion frequently. Experience sufficiently proves it in those who practice it.”

— St Therese of Lisieux, as quoted on page 19 of the magazine ‘Mirror’, ‘special edition’, 2019, by Aid to the Church in Need

“For over a half century, every day, beginning on 2 November 1946, when I celebrated my first Mass in the Crypt of Saint Leonard in Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, my eyes have gazed in recollection upon the host and the chalice, where time and space in some way “merge” and the drama of Golgotha is re-presented in a living way, thus revealing its mysterious “contemporaneity”. Each day my faith has been able to recognize in the consecrated bread and wine the divine Wayfarer who joined the two disciples on the road to Emmaus and opened their eyes to the light and their hearts to new hope.”

— Pope John-Paul II, Encyclical on the Eucharist, 2003

“Whenever possible, I try to celebrate Eucharist every day, for many reasons. The Eucharist contains and carries many deep realities: It helps continue the incarnation of God in history, it is God’s physical embrace, it is an intensification of our community together as Christians, it is the new manna which God gives to nurture his people, it is our family meal together as believers, it is Christ’s sacrifice which we commemorate ritually, it is God’s gift of reconciliation and forgiveness, it is an invitation to a deeper discipleship, it is a banquet table opened up for the poor, it is a vigil service within which we wait for Christ to return, and it is Christ’s priestly prayer for the world.”

— Fr Ron Rolheiser

“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 of Calcutta

“God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why he uses material things like bread and wine to put new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: he invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.”

— CS Lewis

• “The Eucharist teaches us something that spouses, parents, and teachers know well from their own experience—that love does not consist primarily of giving things, but of giving ourselves to be consumed by others.” (p.12)
• “The great St Augustine looked at eating the Eucharist from a different, indeed opposite, angle. He took as his starting point that when we eat food, it is changed into our bodies; he said that in the Eucharist the opposite happens: when we eat the body of Christ we are turned into his body. Both interpretations of the Eucharistic meal are true and both are found in the teaching of Jesus, ‘on that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me and I in you’ (John 14:20).” (p.13)
• “I find that many people relate to Jesus in the same way both before and after Communion. In doing this we neglect the meaning of the Eucharist. I would recommend that after receiving Communion we focus on the fact we and Jesus are one, we in him and he in us. We become conscious of him; bringing us to the Father, praying to the Father within us, and of course in him uniting us with the whole of creation.” (p.13)
• “Therefore, when Jesus says that he gives his flesh to eat and his blood to drink, he is saying three things. The first is that he gives himself totally to others… Secondly, he is inviting people to deep union with himself… Thirdly, he wants them to unite their weakness and sufferings with his so that they can experience his strength and courage.” (p.68)
• “The Eucharist, especially at the Communion Rite, attacks all forms of discrimination at the root: God gives himself to all to be eaten and drunk.” (p.15)

— Michel de Verteuil CSSp, ‘Eucharist as Word’, 2001, Dublin: Veritas Publications ISBN 1 85390 519 4

“The Eucharist… shows us… what value each person, our brother or sister, has in God’s eyes, if Christ offers himself equally to each one, under the species of bread and wine…. Christ comes into the hearts of our brothers and sisters and visits their consciences. How the image of each and every one changes, when we become aware of this reality, when we make it the subject of our reflections!”

— Pope John-Paul II, ‘Dominicae Cenae’ (as quoted in ‘John Paul II: In My Own Words’, 1998, London: Hodder & Stoughton, page 103)

“At the offertory Christ offers himself to the Father for us and for all people. The bread represents the infinite merits of love, offered in union with all the love of the world. The wine represents his agony and death. This is offered in union with the pain and suffering, injustice and oppression of the world.

Standing in Christ’s shoes we are one with him in offering his infinite merits to the Father, together with our own love and suffering and that of the world…. The miracle of the bread and wine transformed into the living presence of the glorified Christ, is a source of endless wonder, gratitude, and peak experience. Christ gives human love and suffering infinite value when we offer it generously, free of expectation.”

— Fr Flann Lynch, Capuchin, Ireland, in his book ‘Vision: a blueprint for an abundant life’, 2006, an accompaniment to the Vision Programme (see theabundanceprayer.com), page 65

“The Eucharist is the body of Christ, a continuation of the incarnation, and, like Jesus’ birth, is meant to bring the divine into concrete, everyday life …. Jesus intended it to be a ritual that invites us to come together as a family in every circumstance of our lives…. Since it is the one ritual given to us by Jesus himself it is one of our places of confidence.

… We can be faithful in this one, deep way: We can go to the Eucharist regularly.”

— Fr Ron Rolheiser