Quotes About Spirituality

Catholicism is a deep matter. You cannot take it up in a teacup" [..] "You must consent to think.

God is invoked … and He is invoked against the God of the spirit, of intelligence and love - excluding and hating this God. What an extraordinary spiritual phenomenon this is: people believe in God and yet do not know God. The idea of God is affirmed and at the same time disfigured and perverted.

him dumfounded as he chanted the Gregorian

Anyone can be sentimental about the nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don't believe in the resurrection, you're not a believer. "If you don't believe in Easter," Owen Meany said. "Don't kid yourself—Don't call yourself a Christian.

I think that was when the headmaster realized he had lost; he realized then that he was finished. Because, what could he do? Was he going to tell us to stop praying? We kept our heads bowed; and we kept praying. Even as awkward as he was, the Rev. Mr. Merrill had made it clear to us that there was no end to praying for Owen Meany.

TODAY'S THE DAY! '… HE THAT BELIEVETH IN ME, THOUGH HE WERE DEAD, YET SHALL HE LIVE; AND WHOSOEVER LIVETH AND BELIEVETH IN ME SHALL NEVER DIE.

I think now that is the nature of hymns-they make us want to repeat them...they are a part of any service, and often the only part of a funeral service, that makes us feel everything is acceptable.

Faith itself is a miracle

This is what a self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends.

good books were the best protection from evil that Pepe had actually held in his hands—you could not hold faith in Jesus in your hands, not in quite the same way you could hold good books.

Ad majorem Dei gloriam—to the greater glory of God.

And from that moment of his introduction to my cousins, I would frequently consider the issue of exactly how human Owen Meany was; there is no doubt that, in the dazzling configurations of the sun that poured through the attic skylight, he looked like a descending angel—a tiny but fiery god, sent to adjudicate the errors of our ways.

Anyone can be sentimental about the Nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don't believe in the resurrection, you're not a believer.

WELL, NOW YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT GOD," said Owen Meany. "I CAN'T SEE HIM—BUT I ABSOLUTELY KNOW HE IS THERE!

pitch. This is what a self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends.

Pour Juan Diego, des morts ou des fantômes auraient dû avoir une toute autre attitude, surtout dans une église. Que venaient-ils chercher ? Ne connaissaient-ils pas les réponses désormais ?

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

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.

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

Retrieving Sorrow is a kind of religion, too.

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.

When he finished reading this passage, Pastor Merrill lifted his face to us and cried out, "'I believe; help my unbelief!' Owen Meany helped my 'unbelief,'" my father said. "Compared to Owen Meany, I am an amateur—in my faith," Mr. Merrill said. "Owen was not just a hero to the United States Army—he was my hero," my father said.

Graham Greene

We must go home to be happy, and our home is not in this world. Here we have nothing to do but our duty.