16 Quotes by Francis George

God always wants what’s best for us, just as you want what’s best for someone you really love. You put them before you, and God does that too. God puts us before His Son, who He sacrificed for our salvation. But the Son did it voluntarily because He has the love of the Father before us.

The fact that God knows everything does not mean that He is directly causing everything. He respects our freedom at our level. He makes it possible for us to act freely. If He didn’t, we wouldn’t act at all – we wouldn’t be at all.

That question in marriage is mutual submission, really – the next verse goes on: “husbands love your wife as Christ loves the Church.”

So, in every case if you really love someone there is an element of submission to them because you want what’s best for them, and at times they’re going to tell you what’s best for them. Even if you have second thoughts about it, you’ll probably still do it because you love them.

Faith is not a contract. Faith is surrender. If no other relationship in our experience is one of self-surrender, if it’s all contractual, people won’t know how to believe.

Religion doesn’t start with a set of laws or rules and it doesn’t start with a set of ideas. It starts with an encounter, with the living God and in our case, Christ risen from the dead. In that encounter you meet someone you can trust. That’s faith: trust in truth.

From a Christian perspective, the answer to all of that is not power, as it is in the modern perspective. It’s love. It’s self-sacrifice. That’s what love is all about. The marriage ceremony says it very well: sacrifice is difficult, but love can make it a joy.

God’s is the causality at the level of our being, and therefore the roots of our freedom. Ours in causality is determinative of what kind of being we’re going to be through our free choices, what kind of action we are going to do through our decisions.

The trust is a matter of love and faith is a matter of truth. The two together give you the guidance that you look for.