Quotes from Francis Cardinal George, OMI

A disciple of Jesus Christ has received gifts from the Lord, and the Lord asks his disciples to be generous with others as he is generous with them.

A man and a woman are able to take the risk of loving each other completely because they know themselves to be loved completely and faithfully by God.

A person of integrity oversees himself or herself. For Christians, the principle of integrity, what holds us together, is faith. The belief that a provident God accompanies us on every step of life's journey and in everything we do keeps us from doing anything that cannot be done in God's company and with the help of His grace.

Again and again, Scripture tells us that God's is a faithful love. Made in God's image and likeness, we are called to be faithful. Fidelity grounds our relationship to God and to those he has given to our care.

An effective ecumenist loves the Church, because the Church's life is part of the mysteries we assent to in our act of faith. Secondly, we have to meet other Christians always in a spirit of reconciliation, mutual respect and understanding.

Appearances are deceiving when it comes to the Holy Eucharist. It looks like the bread of Jesus' time, tastes like unleavened bread, smells and feels like bread but it's not bread. It's the body and blood, human soul and divine nature of Jesus of Nazareth, risen from the dead.

Because marriage celebrated in the Church is a sacrament, it cannot be undone. The Church cannot break a bond created by Christ himself.

Because unity in faith is a gift, dialogue can never be a search for compromise, never have as a goal a negotiated agreement like a business contract.

Christian freedom is found in relationship to Christ himself, not in autonomy or individual independence. Identifying the sources of enslavement today is part of the discernment of spirits which marks our quest for holiness.

Giving alms is not commanded just to help those in need. It is also necessary to help each of us live more freely, more gratuitously, more like the God in whose image we are made.

God makes us a new creation in Christ, forgiving our sins and forming us into the Church. The purpose of evangelizing is to make Jesus Christ known and to invite people to be part of the company of his disciples in the Church. The motive of evangelizing is gratitude for what Christ has given us. The method of evangelizing entails our own personal renewal in the faith and in living Christ's life in his body, the Church.

God shows those in hell all the love they are willing to accept: his justice. To us on earth, God shows his loving mercy. To those in heaven, God shows his face, which is beyond all imagining, the face of love that has no limit and never ends.

Jesus Christ is the end of the ages, the axis of time. In him, the salvation which is the future that God has in store for us has already broken into time.

Jesus did not come back from the grave as a ghost. Nor was it a simple resuscitation of a corpse. Jesus reversed death.

Jesus died with nothing at all and preached that the poor are blessed. He condemned those who have riches and are content that others remain poor.

Jesus rose bodily from the dead. His whole person is with God, but he is still in contact with the world, with each of us. Jesus is with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but he is constantly acting on us in the world. Free of all the bonds of space and time, the risen Jesus can be wherever he wants to be. And he wants to be with us.

Ministries come and go, but the mission of the Church remains constant.

On the cross, Jesus overcame sin. On the evening of the day he rose from the dead, Christ gave his apostles power to forgive sins. In the Sacrament of Penance, through the ministry of the Church, Christ releases the power of Easter into our lives.

Our love can be no more partial than Jesus' love for all those he died to save

Pentecost is a feast of conversion. Our minds are converted to Christ in faith; and our hearts are converted to His mission in charity. Faith and charity are given with the coming of the Holy Spirit. Everything in the Church is a gift.

People of faith care how Scripture is read and interpreted because, like faith itself, Scripture is a gift given to the care of the Church for our salvation. God gives us these gifts because he wills us to be saved.

Some resent being called sinners, but when pastoral oversight and charitable concern for others falters, lives are sooner or later, in this life or the next, brought to destruction.

The Church is founded upon God's self-revelation to his people. This revelation is made in events in which God intervenes in human history, acting to unite people to himself here and for all eternity. People gather around these events and become a community, God's people.

The Church points only to Christ and anything that gets in the way of that proclamation weakens her mission.