Quotes About Faith

There is no Purgatory-that's a catholic invention. There's life on earth, There's heaven-and there's hell

BELIEF IS NOT AN INTELLECTUAL MATTER," he complained. "IF HE'S GOT SO MUCH DOUBT, HE'S IN THE WRONG BUSINESS.

The thing about sin, Jack, is that some people think it's very important and other people don't even believe it exists.

Quando chegou a Portland, já tirara as suas conclusões. Era um obstetra; trazia bebês ao mundo. Os colegas diziam que isso era a obra de Deus. E era um aborteiro; também salvava as mães. Os colegas diziam que isso era a obra do demônio; mas era tudo a obra de Deus para Wilbur Larch. Como a Sra. Maxwell comentara: A alma de um verdadeiro médico não pode deixar de ser ampla e generosa.

You're always telling me I don't have any faith," I wrote to Owen. "Well—don't you see?—that's a part of what makes me so indecisive. I wait to see what will happen next—because I don't believe that anything I might decide to do would matter.

We did not realize that there were forces beyond our play. Now I know they were the forces that contributed to our illusion of Owen's weightlessness; they were the forces we didn't have the faith to feel, they were the forces we failed to believe in—and they were also lifting up Owen Meany, taking him out of our hands. O God—please give him back! I shall keep asking You.

Of course, apologies are rarely acceptable to true believers—or to anyone who believes in pure good, or in pure evil.

Cho? ju? tyle razy prze?y?em m?k? i ?mier? Chrystusa, nieodmiennie niepokoj? si? o Jego zmartwychwstanie - jestem przera?ony, ?e w tym roku si? to nie uda.

That image of how the children can lift Owen over their heads in Sunday school—how he is light enough so they can easily pass him back and forth when the teacher is out of the room—is not only as near to the beginning of the novel as I could find a place for it; that image is echoed at the end of the novel, where Owen's seeming weightlessness is interpreted to mean that he was always in God's hands. But the penultimate paragraph of the

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead …'" Pastor Merrill assured us. "'For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead,'" my father said.

At Owen Meany's burial, one of Owen's Sunday school classmates remembers how easy he was to lift up. "He was so light—he weighed nothing at all! How could he have been so light?" Because God already had His hands on him—that's how.

I know three things. I know that my voice doesn't change, and I know when I'm going to die. I wish I knew why my voice never changes, I wish I knew how I was going to die; but God has allowed me to know more than most people know—so I'm not complaining. The third thing I know is that I am God's instrument; I have faith that God will let me know what I'm supposed to do, and when I'm supposed to do it. Happy New Year!

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

And the trick of having faith, he said, was that it was necessary to believe in God without any great or even remotely reassuring evidence that we don't inhabit a godless universe.

Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there was no room for doubt, there would be no room for me. —FREDERICK BUECHNER

A Prayer for Owen Meany

even if my father never came forth to identify himself, Owen told me, God would identify him for me. "YOUR DAD CAN HIDE FROM YOU

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

Retrieving Sorrow is a kind of religion, too.

Merrill was most appealing because he reassured us that doubt was the essence of faith, and not faith's opposite.

Rape was an outrage even God couldn't understand.

when you scare off the Angel of Death, the Divine Plan calls for the kind of angels you can't scare away;

Not only did Catholics kneel and mutter litanies and creeds without ceasing, but they ritualized any hope of contact with God to such an extent that Owen felt they'd interfered with his ability to pray—to talk to God DIRECTLY, as Owen put it.

THINK OF HARDY AS A MAN WHO WAS ALMOST RELIGIOUS, AS A MAN WHO CAME SO CLOSE TO BELIEVING IN GOD THAT WHEN HE REJECTED GOD, HIS REJECTION MADE HIM FEROCIOUSLY BITTER.