8 Quotes by Raniero Cantalamessa

Good made human beings poor and needy; He even inscribed humility in the human flesh when he created male and female, that is, incomplete creatures. He made them, from the very beginning, two beings, moving in search of one another, each one "unsatisfied" with only himself or herself. God has positioned human beings on a plane that inclines upward, not downward, so that union between man and woman should move them beyond the other sex upward to the supreme Other, God Himself.

There is another explanation for why some people do not get healed. God has two different ways of helping us and showing His power. Either He can remove the physical sickness, or He can give us the strength to carry it in a new, free and joyful way. He can unite us to Christ and complete "what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church" (Colossians 1:24).

We cannot deceive ourselves about offering the whole world as a sacrifice if we ourselves do not die to the world. Saint Paul, after his exhortation to offer our bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, continued, "do not be confirmed to this world" (Romans 12:2), and elsewhere he declared, "The world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" (Galatians 6:14)

If Jesus were to ask me, as He did that poor demoniac in the Gospel: "What is your name?" I too would have to reply: "My name is legion, for there are many of us" (Mk 5:9). There are as many of us as there are desires, plans and regrets which we harbor, each one different from and contrary to others which pull us in opposite directions. They literally dis-tract us, drag us apart.

We will discover, to our surprise, that we are all mentally ill. Our worst mental illness is not insanity. That is certainly a horrible sickness that we would wish on no one, but in comparison to other mental illnesses, it is at least "innocent". Our first mental illness is called unbelief. ... Unbelief is a kind of mental atrophy, an inability to see anything beyond and above our own minds.

I believe that the most necessary thing to do on the feast of Corpus Christi is not to explain some aspect of the Eucharist, but to revive wonder and marvel before the mystery.

The biggest sin against the poor and the hungry is perhaps indifference, making believe we do not see, passing by on the other side of the street.

We are not heading for an eternal void and an eternal silence but we are on our way to an encounter, an encounter with Him who created us and loves us more than mother and father.