The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 13: The Single Deposit of Faith (2026)

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

In today’s “In Brief'' section, Fr. Mike reviews the relationship between Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, emphasizing that both make up the single deposit of Faith. He also explains how the Magisterium is able to interpret authentically and authoritatively the Word of God. Lastly, he reminds us that the way the Church prays and lives, reveals who the Church is. Today's readings are Catechism paragraphs are 96-100. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us revealed in Scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in Here is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is Day 13. Welcome back, everybody. A few reminders as we get started. I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the catechism of the Catholic Church.

That would be just fine. If you want to download your own catechism into your reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com slash C-I-Y. And also, I don't know if you know about this, but you can follow. You can subscribe to this podcast by clicking on subscribe or follow wherever you listen to your podcast for daily notifications. As I said, it is day 13. We just have the in-brief. There are five paragraphs, aka almost about five sentences.

that we're going to just spend time with today. And so it is a summary, obviously, of what we just read, where we just heard the last couple days. So we talked about this. We talked about the transmission of divine revelation. That's what we've been focusing on for the last few days. And so here's God who loves us so much. He wants to reveal himself so fully to us.

He does in Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit. And then the apostles pass this on to us in two ways, right? Through the power of the Holy Spirit. I'm working through the church. That revelation, the fullness of revelation of the Bible. God in Jesus Christ is passed on orally and in writing. And so, and that's then passed down through apostolic succession. We talked all about that. Also, we talked about how there is sacred tradition and sacred scripture make up the deposit of the word of God, right? The deposit of faith there.

And that we need an reliable interpreter of that, the Magisterium. So that's kind of my summary. And now we're going to get what the catechism summary is, again, these are basically five simple sentences that we're going to take a little deeper look at after we say this prayer. Here we go. Let's pray. Father in heaven. Lord God, we thank you so much. We thank you for continuing to reach out to us.

We thank you for continuing to speak to us. We thank you for continuing to call us closer to you. Lord God, you have not abandoned this age. You have not abandoned this generation. But you, in the power of your Holy Spirit, continue to pour out your goodness, your grace, your love and your truth upon every heart that seeks you. Lord God, do you even pour out your grace and truth and love upon hearts that don't seek you? God, help us, help us to be hearts that are open to your love, that are open to your grace,

that are open to your truth, and help us to never forget what you've done in our lives. Seal, seal the knowledge of you and seal the knowledge of truth in our hearts. seal the graces that you've given to us deeply into our lives and help us always, always to pursue you because you will never stop pursuing us. In Jesus' name we pray. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. As I said, it is day 13. We're reading paragraphs 96 through 100, again, five brief sentences, essentially, these five brief paragraphs. But just remember, we can pay attention to like, oh, wait, I've heard these things before. This is simply a reminder of what I already know. I can get it deeper into my heart and deeper into my life. Here we go. Paragraphs 96 through 100.

In brief, what Christ entrusted to the apostles, they in turn handed on by their preaching and writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to all generations until Christ returns in glory. The E. Verbum stated, sacred tradition and sacred scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God, in which as in a mirror, the pilgrim church contemplates God the source of all her riches. Dave Irbham also states, the church in her doctrine, life, and worship, perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes. Thanks to its supernatural sense of faith, the people of God as a whole never ceases to welcome, to penetrate more deeply, and to live more fully from the gift of divine revelation.

The task of interpreting the Word of God authentically has been entrusted solely to the magisterium of the church, that is, to the Pope and to the bishops in communion with him. All right, as I said, five sentences. That is all we have today. That's why today's going to be kind of a little nugget day, this kind of bite-sized pieces. And one of the things I want to highlight, again, is just something that might have been a little bit of a surprise to some people. Typically, we think, okay, divine revelation is the Bible, right?

That's the Word of God. yes, you are not wrong, but also we recognize that sacred tradition and sacred scripture as a whole, they make up the single sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is necessary for us. And why can we say that that's necessary? Why can we say that divine revelation includes the sacred tradition and not merely sacred scripture? Well, we can say it for a number of reasons. One of those reasons being scripture kind of points this out. In fact, St. Paul himself makes it relatively clear in this second letter to the Thessalonians,

when he says, so then, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter. Remember going back over the last couple of days, we noted that divine revelation has come to us orally and in writing. We didn't just make that up. That comes from your sacred scripture, where sacred scripture itself says, yeah, this is what we've passed on to you, orally or in writing. Not only that, but we also recognize the role of the church,

of the church to be able to give us divine revelation. I mean, think about this. We have the canon of scripture, the list of the books of the Bible, all 73 books. That's that list of the books in the Bible isn't in the Bible. Where does it come from? Well, it comes from sacred tradition. And so we recognize that everybody, everybody who reads the Bible and says, yep, these are the books. They're relying upon an authority outside of the Bible. They're relying upon sacred tradition. So we can say really clearly that sacred tradition and sacred scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God. We need both because without either, we would be, well, we would be deficient essentially. And so that's really important as we just kind of highlight this.

Moving on from there, paragraph 98 states, the church in her doctrine, life, and worship perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes. Now, the first part of that statement, I think we would all say, oh, that obviously where it says the church in her doctrine, that yeah, in her teaching, doctrine simply indicates teaching, that the church in her doctrine perpetuates and transmits to every generation what she is and what she believes. But the statement is not just that the church in her doctrine, meaning like here's the teachings, but in her life and her worship perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes. That is so important.

It's so real. You know, there are many people who have come to like an intellectual conversion to Jesus or an intellectual conversion to the Catholic faith. Meaning, you know, they've read their way into the church, which is, it's beautiful, it's powerful, it's amazing. And then they show up to a parish and they say, oh, wow, this is not like what I read. Because, you know, every parish is slightly different. They might go to Mass and like, wait a second, they might know the beauty, the mystery,

the power, the reality of the mass, and then they show up for a daily mass at whatever church and they're thinking, oh my gosh, this is what that is? Oh, goodness gracious. That can be a situation. But the church is highlighting the catechism here, quoting Dave Airboom, is highlighting. No, actually that does reveal what and who the church is, that the life and worship of the church, not the broken life, not necessarily a broken worship or the cheap worship where maybe someone isn't actually doing what they should be doing at Mass. But the way the church prays and the way the church lives does reveal who the church is and what the church believes.

Now, here's what I mean. There's this phrase, Lex Arandi, Lex Credendi. And what that means in English is the law of prayer is the law of belief, meaning that the way the church prays actually reveals the way the church, what the church believes. And so I would invite every one of us to pay attention to the prayers that are uttered during the mass because this is revealing something deeply about what it is that we believe as, as followers of Jesus Christ. And that's so powerful. Also, we recognize the church inner doctrine, as we said, yep, life and worship perpetuates and transmits to every generation, all that she

herself is, all she believes. There's this element where sometimes, you'll have Christians who will say, well, you know, kind of challenge Catholics and say, well, where's that in the Bible? Where did you get that idea? Like, that's not, that's not necessarily explicitly there. And we'd say, okay, a couple things to keep in mind. One thing to keep in mind is, as we already noted, Second Thessalonians, where Second Thessalonians, Paul notes that there are things that we believe that were not written down, that were simply spoken by word of mouth, right? Okay, so things that we believe that are not strictly speaking in sacred scripture, but are part of sacred tradition. That's second Thessalonians. Also, the church has the authority to teach why,

because in 1st Timothy 315 is very, very important. First Timothy 315, St. Paul is writing to Timothy. And he basically says, I hope to come to you soon. This is verse 14. But I'm writing these instructions to you so that if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth. Now, that is very, very important. Why? Because it highlights the fact that here is scripture saying that the church is the pillar and bulwark of truth. A lot of times you have people who say, no, no, scripture is the pillar and bulwark of truth. Okay, okay, I believe the scripture is true. We're going to talk about that more in the days to come. But scripture itself says that the church is the pillar

and bulwark of truth and we have to pay attention to that. We can't dismiss that or ignore that or deny that because it is true. So we recognize that the church, yes, in her doctrine, written down sacred scripture and in her doctrine, sacred tradition, but in her very life, it's also that last piece, the very life. It's kind of an example that I think it might go back back in the day to a movie called A Few Good Men. At one point, if you've seen it, you know what the story is. Here's the Tom Cruise movie, and here is, there's a soldier, and he is stationed in Guantanamo Bay,

and he gets killed by his fellow soldiers who are carrying out this thing that they were calling a code red. Now, a code red was apparently a off the book's term or phrase used to indicate the ways in which a fellow soldiers would keep their fellow soldiers in line. Kind of a thing like they'd meet out some discipline to the fellow soldiers to bring them up to scratch or kind of whatever. So it's kind of a hazing kind of a disciplinary thing. And this one was not only violent, but it ended up with the death of this guy. Anyways, so here's the courtroom scene. And they're trying to figure out, was there a code red that was issued, right? Was this, did this come from the top down?

What happened? Was it just these two soldiers had accidentally murdered this fellow soldier? Or did they have orders from above? Okay, so here's the courtroom. And at one point, there is one of these soldiers on the stand. And Kevin Bacon's character, he was also in this movie, because of course he is, he's a lawyer and he's saying here's the military handbook for

life down in Guantanamo Bay he says soldier turn to the page in the handbook that tells you about code reds and the soldier kind of is confused and he says well there is there's no page that talks about code reds like seriously so are you

here trying to tell me that this big thing that you say happened this code red thing that everybody knows about and actually is one of the ways they keep soldiers in line down here is not even in the military handbook that covers everything, you know, from A to Z here in of life in Guantanamo Bay. And the soldier's like, I'm sorry, sir, you know, there's no code read in this book. So basically, Kevin Bacon's character is trying to deny the reality or the existence of code reds because it's not in the book.

And so Kevin Bacon walks away smugly. You know, just kind of proved his point. And Tom Cruise, the opposing counsel, right? He walks up pretty smugly as well. He takes the book from Kevin Bacon's character and says, hands it to the soldier again. and he says, okay, soldier, point to the page where it shows you how to get to the dining hall, how to get to the mess hall, how to get, you know, fed, the cafeteria. And the soldier looks confused and says, no, sir, there's, there's, it doesn't tell you how to get to the

cafeteria here. It doesn't have, does tell you how to get to the dining hall in, in this book. And Tom Cruise's character says, wait, are you telling me that in the six months you were down there, you didn't eat one meal? And no, no, sir, we had, you know, three squares a day. You know, every day. And so, well, how did you, how did you find it if it wasn't in the book? And the guy answers, the soldier answers. He says, I guess I just followed the crowd at Chow Time. And this is the point, okay, thank you for letting me recap this movie from the 1990s.

But the point there is, the Kevin Bacon character was saying, is it in the book? If it's not in the book, it must not exist, right? And the Tom Cruise character is saying, yes, there is a lot of instructions, a lot of very important information that's in this book. book, but there are also things that are part of life on the base in Guantanamo Bay that are not written in the book. And the same thing is true when it comes to our Christian faith. There are so many things written in the book, absolutely. But there are also so many things that are not written in the book, but are part of life following after Jesus. We have written tradition and we have spoken tradition, right? We have sacred scripture and sacred tradition. And that is so, so very

important that we understand that that's all part of what we call the deposit of faith. Lastly, the task of interpreting the Word of God authentically has been entrusted solely to the Magisterium of the Church, that is to the Pope and the bishops in communion with him. And that's one of those things we just, again, come back to. We realize that this Magisterium, this Magister, right, the teacher, has been able to interpret authentically and authoritatively the Word of God for us. And therefore, we don't need to be concerned or worried. We know that we have a teacher that when Jesus said to the apostles, he who hears you, hears me, that at the last, when Jesus ascended to heaven, he says, go therefore make disciples

of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. And behold, I'm with you always until the end of the age, that he meant it. And so God is still with us in his word. He's with us in his sacraments. He's with us in the church. he still teaches us through the Holy Spirit working through the Magisterium. And so, yeah, it's always living.

It's always active. God's Word is alive and it comes to us every single day. God keeps speaking to us just like today. As he's speaking to us every single day. As I said, little nugget today. So here we go. Maybe it wasn't so small. But, you know, five paragraphs, five sentences.

There's a lot of meat on them bones. Anyways, you guys, I am so grateful tomorrow. is the end of two full weeks. Tomorrow will be day 14, you guys. Thank you so much for being part of this journey. I am so grateful for you, and I'm praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike, and I cannot wait to see you tomorrow.

God bless.