Faith. You might as well take the “Catholic” out of Catholic Gentleman if you don’t have it. Faith is another one of those three theological virtues. You’ll often hear this to mean that the theological virtues are called such because they have God for their object. This means that if there was no God, there’d be no Faith either. On the flip side, without Faith, we’re denying and rejecting God and all He has revealed to us.
How do I know that I have the virtue of Faith? Well, I must exercise a trust in God and be honest with myself in judging whether I believe in God and believe all that He has said and revealed to us. This also means that I am faithful to the Catholic Church and all that She teaches for our belief. Faith means that I have committed myself completely to God and that I seek to do His will. We do this all because God is truth. (CCC 1814)
Faith can come easy for some, but it can be a huge stumbling block for others. I mean, Faith means that we have totally abandoned our selves to God and His truth. This is no ordinary task. It means that we stand apart from the culture around us by embracing the Catholic teachings on contraception, homosexuality, abortion, male priesthood, and whatever else is said to be a difficult teaching to swallow. And to make matters worse, thanks to our scientific and “reasonable” culture, faith is increasingly challenged today by skepticism of all things divine, spiritual, revealed, and religious.
Let us talk about science for a moment: I want to make it clear that I appreciate science and I am enthralled by the natural truths that science has uncovered. But, science isn’t everything and those who have made science their religion also practice a certain element of “faith” in that they place their trust in science. I find it strange that we, almost unquestioningly, accept scientific claims as fact, when really, we only hold to them in faith unless we are able to verify them firsthand. I wouldn’t know the first step of trying to calculate the size of the sun, so I accept by “faith” the word of science. I will likely never see for myself the molecular marvels within a living cell, yet I accept by “faith” the word of biology. Scientists are only men, and we believe their word without blinking an eye. Well, God is God – Perfect Truth and Perfect Authority, and that should be reason enough to place our Faith in Him and what He has revealed.
In fact, our Faith in God and what He reveals through His Church is supernatural. It draws us “above” or “beyond” the earthly natural toward God the Creator. By Faith, we assent to the supernatural truths of Divine Revelation. This brings us back to the fact that Faith is a Theological Virtue. It draws us to God as its object and it leads to the hope of His promise of everlasting life, where our Faith will be satisfied. Yet Faith is impossible without God, who first reaches out to us with grace. May we, as Catholic Gentlemen, participate with His grace!
I invite you to pray a Manly Act of Faith here!
Let us pray that we may respond to God’s call to greater Faith and that we may place our lives in His hands and submit to His will as we grow in Manly Faith!
Faith is “the act of the intellect assenting to a Divine truth owing to the movement of the will, which is itself moved by the grace of God” ~ Saint Thomas Acquinas
~ The Catholic Gentleman's Guide