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Raniero Cantalamessa

Raniero Cantalamessa Biography

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“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).”

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Book:Sober Intoxication of the Spirit: Filled With the Fullness of God
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“I would like to share an insight from Luther. In a sermon on Pentecost he affirmed that we are born with an old heart, a heart full of carnal desires and concupiscence. People desire prestige, power, money, their neighbour's goods, their neighbour's wife and so on, but God blocks their path with His commandments: "You must not...; you must not...!" In this situation, said Luther, it is inevitable that they would begin to look at God with a sullen eye, as an enemy of their own happiness, as the one who is the obstacle to obtaining their desires. There is a silent bitterness in sinful people against God, to the extent that, if it depended on them, they would rather that God did not even exist. When the Holy Spirit comes, here is the miracle! He presents people with a different face for God: a God who is an ally, not an adversary; a good Father who did not spare even His own Son for them; in short, a God who shows them favour. They understand that God has given them the commandments for their good. A new feeling springs up in their hearts, that of sons or daughters, and from their lips at last comes the cry, "Abba, Father!”

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Book:Sober Intoxication of the Spirit: Filled With the Fullness of God
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“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)”

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Book:Sober Intoxication of the Spirit: Filled With the Fullness of God
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“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.”

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Book:Virginity: A Positive Approach to Celibacy for the Sake of the Kingdom of Heaven
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“In any love-story there are usually two stages or phases. There is the initial stage, where love is expressed by the giving of gifts, especially the gift of self. Then there comes a time when it is no longer enough to give gifts to the beloved, but one has to be ready to suffer for her or for him. Only then can it be seen whether the love is real. In the story of a vocation to consecrated virginity there are also usually two stages. There is the initial stage of the vocation, when, spurred on by grace and attracted by the ideal, one joyfully and enthusiastically says, "Yes, Lord, here I am!" Then comes the time of solitude of heart, of weariness, of crisis, when, in order to maintain that "Yes," one has to die”

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Book:Virginity: A Positive Approach to Celibacy for the Sake of the Kingdom of Heaven
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“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.”

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Book:Sober Intoxication of the Spirit: Filled With the Fullness of God
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“Throughout history there have been many men and women who have chosen to imitate Jesus as he withdraws into the desert... To pass time in the desert means to create a little emptiness and silence around us, to rediscover the road to our heart, to remove ourselves from the noise and external distractions, to enter into contact with the deepest source of our being and our faith.”

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Author:Raniero Cantalamessa
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“It is true that not even Christ is seen, but he exists; he is risen, he is alive, he is close to us, more truly than the most enamored husband is close to his wife. Here is the crucial point: to think of Christ not as a person of the past, but as the risen and living Lord, with whom I can speak, whom I can even kiss if I so wish, certain that my kiss does not end on the paper or on the wood of a crucifix, but on a face and on the lips of living flesh (even though spiritualized), happy to receive my kiss.”

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Author:Raniero Cantalamessa
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“The immense wealth of doctrine and institutions can become a handicap if we are trying to present all of that to a person who has lost all contact with the Church and no longer knows who Jesus is. That would be like clothing a baby with one of those enormous, heavy brocaded copes that priests and bishops used to wear. Instead, it is necessary to help this person establish a relationship with Jesus.”

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Author:Raniero Cantalamessa
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“Laypeople are a kind of nuclear energy in the Church on a spiritual level. A layperson caught up with the gospel and living next to other people can "contaminate" two others, and these two, four others, etc. Since lay Christians number not only tens of thousands like the clergy but hundreds of millions, they can truly play a decisive role in spreading the beneficial light of the gospel in the world.”

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Author:Raniero Cantalamessa
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