Faith
"He hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9).
From our consideration on the end of man, which was the theme of our last instruction, we saw that Faith, the Commandments, and the Means of Grace, form the principal subject-matter of the catechism.
We propose in our discourse to-day to take the first of these three divisions, and with the help of the Holy Ghost, to consider it under two heads:
I. The nature of faith.
II. The object of faith.
I
The catechism seeks to define our conception of faith by asking, "What is faith," and the answer runs: "Faith is a theological virtue by which we firmly believe the truths which God has revealed."
Faith, therefore, consists in believing. Every kind of human knowledge rests on a foundation of belief in something, but the question before us is to differentiate between knowledge founded on faith, and every other kind of human knowledge. Around us we see many different classes of objects, animals, plants, minerals. Among animals we distinguish the birds of the air, the fish in the sea, and all those brute beasts which live on land. In speaking thus, we are classifying them according to the regions they inhabit. Again, amongst the stars we have fixed stars, which do not move, planets, which revolve more or less regularly round the sun, and comets, whose orbit seems more uncertain. Now, just as we classify those things which are outside us, so must we deal with the things that are within us. But on what lines is our classification to be made? This I will endeavor to show. In all knowledge something has to be accepted as true. That belongs to the very nature of knowledge. But for what reason is it accepted as true? If we keep that question well before our mind it will give us the right basis upon which to work.
When Columbus and his companions, after a long voyage at last reached land and disembarked in America for the first time, they at that moment certainly believed in the New World. They believed in it because they had seen it with their eyes and trodden it with their feet. They trusted the evidence of their senses. But Columbus himself had been already long and firmly convinced of the reality of its existence. What had convinced him? Had anyone told him of it? No one. The possibility of such a thing had barely been surmised. Columbus from his own observations had drawn his conclusions. He had seen some strange flotsam brought in by the westerly wind to the shores of Europe, pieces of wood curiously carved and of a kind hitherto unknown. The sea could not have produced these, he reasoned to himself; the unfamiliar wood must be the product of some far-off undiscovered country whose inhabitants have done the carving. In this way, pondering over these pieces of wood, he found evidence to persuade him of the existence of America, just as when we see smoke ascending from a chimney we feel sure there is a fire burning inside, although we have not seen it. But to continue: Columbus with his companions returned to Europe to the court of King Ferdinand, and there, to the amazement of all who heard them, they told of the wonderful country they had discovered on the other side of the ocean, and of the strange varieties of plants, animals, and men they had found there. Now, did Ferdinand and his court really credit all this? Certainly they did. On what grounds did they credit it? They had not, like Christopher and his companions, seen it with their own eyes, nor had they proved, as he had done, the likelihood of its existence by their own logical reasoning. Not at all. Then why did they assume that it was all true? Because Columbus, who was an honorable and conscientious man, bore witness to it with his companions. So Columbus, we observe, had believed in America before seeing it because he had found evjdence of its existence; his companions believed because they had beheld it with their own eyes; and Ferdinand and his court believed simply on the testimony of Columbus.
Now I am able to show you exactly in what Faith consists. In a strict and proper sense we have faith only when we accept as true something we have neither seen for ourselves, nor deduced from our own observations; in other words, when we hold something to be true which another person has told us, and indeed because he has told us. This kind of knowledge which we get by relying on the word of some one else, figures very largely, more largely indeed than any other, in the sum total of human learning. All that we know of the past, of distant countries and people, rests on faith. How could children be educated unless they accepted as true what their parents tell them? How would pupils ever learn who refused to believe the word of their teacher? How could history be written if we did not admit the credibility of earlier chroniclers? How could a judge come to a decision unless he trusted the testimony given by witnesses under oath?
I am saying, then, that one kind of human knowledge consists in believing what trustworthy people have told us. Here we have faith in the secular sense of the word. Faith in the Christian sense consists in our believing what the Lord God has said or revealed to us. And surely if it be in the nature of things to believe what people worthy of confidence tell us, how much more firmly, more uncompromisingly, more unswervingly, may we believe what God tells us. For God knows all things. He is the very truth, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. It is on the eternal truth and infallible veracity of God and on His infinite holiness that we found our faith in all that He tells us. Faith, therefore, "is a theological virtue by which we firmly believe the truths which God has revealed."
II
We now go on to ask what are the propositions or truths which we are bound to believe? We are bound to believe everything without exception that God has revealed. But has God addressed each one of us? Has He spoken to you, to me, to them, to all of us? Not to each one of us individually, but to certain special groups of men and through them to all the rest. To whom, then, has God spoken and by whom? Under the Old Law God made His revelations to men through the patriarchs and prophets. The patriarchs, such as Adam and Noah, were the fathers of the human race, or else, like Abraham, the head of one particular people. The prophets were men specially enlightened by God and given by Him a special mission to mankind. Under the New Law God has revealed Himself through His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and through the apostles, who were His first disciples and the earliest teachers of the Church.
And all that God has revealed, whether under the Old, or under the New, Law, has been preserved, proclaimed, and proposed to us by the Church. Therefore, faith, in the Christian sense, means to believe without doubting the truths that God has revealed, and communicated to us through His Church.
What, then, is the subject-matter of God's revelation to us? What does it contain? With what does it deal? Is it with questions of agriculture, or geography, or with the secrets and forces of nature? It is concerned with none of these things, and when mention of them occurs it is merely to illustrate by way of parable or simile some lesson which it is necessary to bring home to us, as, for instance, when our Saviour speaks of the vineyard, or of the draught of fishes. So, again, we ask, what is the subject-matter of the truths revealed to us by God? They contain everything, absolutely everything which we require to know for our eternal salvation. Oh, what a multitude of great and weighty matters God has unfolded to us concerning Himself and the Godhead, His perfections, His works, and the creation of the world - things that the most perfect telescope ever invented by man would fail to bring within the range of human eyes - the origin of our first parents, the beauty of their primary state, their first home in Paradise - their temptation, their sin and misery! Then comes the human race with the history of its many wanderings, enterprises, and retributions, of the chosen people of God, their patriarchs and prophets, kings and judges, and, finally, their rejection and downfall. Above all, we learn of the life, sufferings, and glory of Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man for us, His apostles, His Church, His sacraments - the end of the world, the judgment, and our own eternal destiny - heaven or hell.
Oh, what a multitude of divine truths the revelation of God embraces! How it lights up the past and radiates into the future! How much it makes known to us which it would have baffled all the discernment and wit of man to discover! God's knowledge is infinite. He reveals to us many things which we can not and never will understand in this world, and, because His wisdom surpasses ours in such an infinite degree, we must believe all He tells us, and hold it to be true, not because we understand it, but because an all-holy and omniscient God has revealed it to us. This is the foundation on which we Catholics build our faith.
Let us thank the Lord our God, who has called us, as St. Peter says, "out of the darkness into His marvelous light" - out of unbelief, which is truly a groping in darkness. For what does the unbeliever know, either of where he came from, or whither he is going? He is enveloped in a gloom which all the electric light in the world, be it ever so powerful, is unable to dispel; he has no assurance of what awaits him after death, no knowledge of the pitfalls which lurk on the road, no conception of the fearful abyss of hell. He is blind in the light of day.
Let us, indeed, thank God, who has called us out of the darkness into His wonderful light, who not only illumines the way we have to go, but in His merciful love treads it with us. It is that same road on which mankind had traveled since the beginning of the world, and will ever travel, the very ground over which, with its heights and depths, its hills and hollows, its dangers and ultimate goal, you yourselves, each one of you, have to make your earthly pilgrimage.
We will say with the Psalmist: "Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my paths" (Psalms cxviii. 105). Yes, Lord, faith will be the light to guide my feet on the long, weary, and thorny road that may perhaps still lie before me. Grant that this light may never grow dim in my heart, but let it burn so brightly that I may not only know the way, but may walk in it; may not only see the dangers, but may shun them; that I may not only recognize the goal, but may attain it - life everlasting. Amen.
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Adapted from Popular Sermons on the Catechism by Fr. A. Hubert Bamberg, Edited by Fr. Herbert Thurston, S.J. (1914)
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