Remember, Listen, and Eat (1 Corinthians 10:1-22)

“How are we supposed to be able to help those who are without joy and courage, if we ourselves are not borne by courage and joy? What is meant here is not something made or forced, but something given and free. With God there is joy, and from him it comes down and seizes spirit, soul, and body. And where this joy has seized a person, it reaches out around itself, it pulls others along, it bursts through closed doors. There is a kind of joy that knows nothing at all of the pain, distress, and anxiety of the heart. But it cannot last; it can only numb for a time. The joy of God has gone through the poverty of the manger and the distress of the cross; therefore it is invincible and irrefutable.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is in the Manger, December 28

The Lord's Supper (1 Corinthians 11:17-34)

“Q. 172. May one who doubts of his being in Christ, or of his due preparation, come to the Lord’s supper?

A. One who doubts of his being in Christ, or of his due preparation to the sacrament of the Lord’s supper, may have true interest in Christ, though he be not yet assured thereof; and in God’s account has it, if he be duly affected with the apprehension of the want of it, and unfeignedly desires to be found in Christ, and to depart from iniquity: in which case (because promises are made, and this sacrament is appointed, for the relief even of weak and doubting Christians) he is to bewail his unbelief, and labor to have his doubts resolved; and, so doing, he may and ought to come to the Lord’s supper, that he may be further strengthened.”

— Westminster Larger Catechism

Jesus's Prayer for Us: Unity (John 17:20-26)

“[There] is nothing so social by nature as man, nothing so unsocial by corruption.”

— Augustine of Hippo

“[R]edemption being a work of restoration will appear to us by that very fact as the recovery of lost unity – the recovery of supernatural unity of man with God, but equally of the unity of men among themselves.”

— Henri de Lubac