The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 22: Wrestling with Faith (2024)

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

In our Catechism readings today, Fr. Mike reflects on the motives of credibility for believing in God. We learn that God offers us signs and proofs that show us that he truly is who he says he is. Fr. Mike also clarifies the difference between doubting the Faith and struggling with it. He assures us that wrestling with faith is a normal human experience. Today's readings are Catechism paragraphs 156-162. 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 Any Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in sacred scripture, and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism Any Year 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. It is day two and two. 22 is the name of the day today,

or the number of the day today. We're reading paragraphs 156 to 162. 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. Also, you can follow along with our reading plan by going to ascensionpress.com slash DIY. You can get the Catechism in a

year reading plan. You can also click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily notifications and updates and whatever comes along your way. It is day 22. So paragraphs 156 to 162. Continue to talk about faith. The last couple days we've been talking about what's our response to God's revealing himself. We talked about how faith is both a grace, right? It is a gift from God. It's also a human act. But today, well not but today and today, we're taking that next step, talking about how faith and understanding, that what moves us to believe is not the fact that everything appears true and intelligible in light of natural human reason, but also because God has revealed Himself. We're believing not only in that all this makes sense, we're believing in the fact that God has authority, that God

is truth. We're actually, here's the crazy thing we're going to talk about today, that when we grow in faith, sometimes it's helped by obviously evidence, signs, proofs, that kind of thing. It'd be so helpful. Ultimately though, we're not simply, as we've mentioned this before, we're not simply believing in God, we're believing God, right? We're believing in Him because we know that He is true. And that's one of those things.

So we can move and grow our faith, we can move and grow into understanding more deeply. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. We're also gonna talk about the role between faith and science. We've talked about this before. We're going to review it again that there is no discrepancy. There's no real discrepancy between faith and reason or faith and science. Also, we have to be free. Human beings have to be free to say no if our yes is going to mean anything. We have to be free to say no if our yes is gonna mean anything We have to be free to reject the truth if our adherence to truth is gonna mean anything and so

Faith has to be free There's a freedom of faith There's also the necessity of faith and perseverance in faith that that we need to have faith in our Lord Jesus Christ in order to have his Life because why well, we'll talk later about why we need faith why the necessity of faith is so important but also about how faith has to be the kind of thing in which we persevere and that is so absolutely critical for us all these pieces are critical that we grow in understanding of our faith that we know the one in whom we trust that we trust freely and that of course we hold out to the end. Because that is the challenge in so many ways, that the one in whom we believe on the mountaintop

is the same one who's with us in the valley. So let's pray, Father in heaven, we know that on sunny days and days where everything is going well, that you are God. We also know that when we are in the valley of the shadow of death, you are still God. We know that when we have everything we've ever wanted, you are trustworthy and when we are so confused and feel so lost and so alone, you are still trustworthy. Help us to trust in you.

Help us to continue to adhere to you. Help us to continue to adhere to you. Help us to continue to submit our intellect and will to you. Help us to belong to you fully, not only in this moment, but in every single moment of our lives so that the end of our lives, we can have that grace of final perseverance clinging to you even in darkness. Help us to always know that what was true in the light is also true in the darkness. Be with us in both, Lord God. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. As I said, it is day 22. We are reading paragraphs 156 to 162. Faith and Understanding What moves us to believe is not the fact that

revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason. We believe because of the authority of God Himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. So that the submission of our faith might nevertheless be in accordance with reason, God willed that external proofs of His revelation should be joined to the internal helps of the Holy Spirit. Thus, the miracles of Christ and the saints, prophecies, the Church's growth and holiness, and her fruitfulness and stability are the most certain signs of divine revelation, adapted to the intelligence of all, they are motives of credibility, motiva credibilitatis, which show that the ascent of faith is by no means a blind impulse of

the mind. Faith is certain. It is more certain than all human knowledge because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie. To be sure, revealed truths can seem obscure to human reason and experience, but the certainty that the divine life gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives. As Cardle Newman stated, 10,000 difficulties do not make one doubt. Faith Seeks Understanding It is intrinsic to faith that a believer desires to know better the one in whom he has put his faith and to understand better what he

has revealed. A more penetrating knowledge will in turn call forth a greater faith, increasingly set a fire by love. The grace of faith opens the eyes of your hearts to a lively understanding of the contents of Revelation, that is, of the totality of God's plan and the mysteries of faith, of their connection with each other and with Christ, the center of the revealed mystery. Dave Erbum states, The same Holy Spirit constantly perfects faith by His gifts, so that revelation may

be more and more profoundly understood. In the words of St. Augustine, I believe in order to understand, and I understand the better to believe. Faith in Science Dei Philius stated, Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and enthuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth. Gaudium et spes stated, Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly

scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself. For it is God, the conserver of all things who made them what they are." The Freedom of Faith. To be human, man's response to God by faith must be free, and therefore nobody is to be forced to embrace the faith against his will. The act of faith is of its very nature a free act. God calls men to serve Him in spirit and in truth. Consequently, they are bound to Him in conscience, but not coerced.

This fact received its fullest manifestation in Christ Jesus. Indeed, Christ invited people to faith and conversion, but never coerced them. For He bore witness to the truth, but refused to use force to impose it on those who spoke against it. bore witness to the truth but refused to use force to impose it on those who spoke against it. His kingdom, grows by the love with which Christ, lifted up on the cross, draws men to himself. The Necessity of Faith

Believing in Jesus Christ and in the one who sent him for our salvation is necessary for obtaining that salvation. Since without faith it is impossible to please God and to attain to the fellowship of His sons, therefore, without faith, no one has ever attained justification, nor will anyone obtain eternal life but He who endures to the end. Perseverance in Faith Faith is an entirely free gift that God makes to man. We can lose this priceless gift, as St. Paul indicated to St. Timothy when he stated,

Wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith. To live, grow, and persevere in the faith until the end, we must nourish it with the Word of God. We must beg the Lord to increase our faith. It must be working through charity, abounding in hope and rooted in the faith of the church." Okay, so we had, that's a chunk, that is a, that's some depth we had today. So where do we start? Well, we started way back in paragraph 156 where we talked about faith and understanding.

You know, this is, I think this is remarkable. This first paragraph 156 talks about this. It says, yes, revealed truths, right? God revealing Himself. What moves us to believe those are not the fact that that's like, oh, duh, obvious, that they're true and intelligible just by our human reason alone, right? So that's not why we believe them That's not what moves us to believe What moves us to believe is the authority of God himself now at the same time it goes on to say in this paragraph at the same time It doesn't go contrary to our reason. We don't have to turn off our reason. In fact, it's not just hey, believe me Why because that is not what God's asking. He's not saying, believe me, how come?

Because he's actually, he's demonstrated. Remember back in the Gospel of John, whenever Jesus did a miracle, John indicated that as a sign in wonder, that was the phrase that he did many signs and wonders. Why? What are those things? Those are proofs. They're not simply miracles.

I mean, not that miracles are simple. They weren't simply there to heal the person who was sick or to exercise the demon that was tormenting the person, although obviously that's what happened. But they were signs and wonders, signs pointing that Jesus could be trusted. And similarly, here is the Catechism that says, there's a lot of external proofs. Like what? Well, miracles of Jesus, miracles of the saints. I think there are so many miracles

that the church has investigated and documented. That, I mean, that's still happening even now, which is remarkable. Prophecies, you know, how many prophecies in the Old Testament does Jesus fulfill? It's like something like over 300 of them. 300 Old Testament prophecies that Jesus Christ fulfills. That points to the reality that, oh, He is who He says He is. We can trust Him. The Church's growth and holiness, Her fruitfulness and stability, all these things, they're what they call motives of credibility.

As I said in Latin, motiva credibilitati, which show that the ascent of faith, right, when we give faith, as it says here, is by no means a blind impulse of the mind. We are never called to simple blind faith. God has given us proofs, right? He's given us signs and wonders, and so we trust in Him. Now, going on, faith is certain. Why? Faith is certain because God can't lie. So if we're trusting in the one who can't lie, that's always going to be a more and more certain faith. Yet at the same time it says here, some revealed truths can seem obscure, they can seem difficult to accept. But I love this. We're going to come back to this quote a couple times in the course of our journey through this

year. It's a quote from John Henry Cardinal Newman where he said, 10,000 difficulties do not make one doubt. That quote is used a couple times in the Catechism. 10,000 difficulties do not make one doubt. So the reality that you might say, I don't know, but I don't know about this teaching or that teaching. As long as you keep struggling with it, that's not doubt. If faith is, when I submit my intellect and my will to God, doubt is not just I'm struggling with this, doubt is I refuse, right? I refuse to submit my intellect. I refuse to submit my will to God. So if I'm having a difficulty, I'm having those questions, this challenge, I don't know what this teaching is, I don't know why

this teaching is, or I don't know how I'm called to live this teaching, that's completely fine. We continue to seek understanding because 10,000 difficulties do not add up to one single doubt. And that's why we seek understanding. I love this because the Catechism is saying, okay, if you have faith, well, we got to keep diving more deeply into it. We want to understand even more. We want to continue to feed on scripture. We wanna continue to get close to God. You know, the final pillar of the Catechism is on prayer. And it's just, one of the things I wanted,

is I wanted us to have a little paragraph on prayer every single day throughout the course of this year. But it just doesn't work out that way. Why? Because if we're gonna seek understanding, we're not just seeking, I want to know more. I want to know more so that I can love more. I want to know more so I can love better. And that's the growth in prayer. And that comes about because of faith. And when we pray, we grow in faith as that understanding increases. Now, as we've already said a couple times,

paragraph 159, faith in science. Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Why? Because truth cannot contradict truth. So there is this false dichotomy between faith and science, a false dichotomy between faith and reason. But reason cannot contradict reason.

Truth cannot contradict truth. Science cannot contradict faith as long as it's good science and good faith. As we said before, they're asking different questions. Now paragraph 160, talking about the freedom of faith, that one of the things the church has affirmed and reaffirmed is that basing itself off of Jesus, right? For Jesus who never forced anyone to believe. Jesus who could have, who could have overpowered anyone's will. He could have overpowered anyone's reluctance to believe him, or refusal to believe him. He could have done this.

He could have taken away their freedom. He never did. He never coerced anyone to believing in him. You know, one of the things I think St. John Paul II once said is, the church never imposes, she merely proposes, because that's what our Lord did. He presented himself and invited us to respond to his truth. He never coerced, he did call for conversion,

but he never coerced it. And that's so important. I love that quote that was given to us. It said, Jesus bore witness to the truth, but refused to use force to impose it on those who spoke against it. His kingdom grows by the love with which Christ lifted up on the cross, draws men to himself. Again, God's greatest desire is not that we simply acknowledge that he exists. What he wants is he wants us to be in relationship with him. He wants us to trust him and that's required for us. That's necessary for us. In fact, paragraph 161 talking about the necessity of faith You know, it's one of those things like yeah, but what about those people who don't believe we're gonna talk about that later on

But we know you and I know That Jesus has made it very very clear scripture has made it very very clear that without faith It's impossible to please God and to attain to the fellowship of his sons So we know that what happens to other people, we're gonna talk about that later. What happens to us though, that's gonna be important. And lastly, we know that we can lose our faith, like we can give it away.

We can lose this priceless gift. You know, at St. Paul's letter to Timothy, where he says, some people by rejecting conscience have made a shipwreck of their faith. St. Paul even says, you know, that's why I drive my body and train it for fear after having preached to others, I myself might be disqualified.

So we realize that, man, I could just get disqualified. I mean, how many times do we read stories in the Old Testament, maybe even the New Testament? How many stories do we know ourselves of people who are so close to the Lord and genuinely, like truly loved Him and of course are loved by Him and then decided to walk away or decided to drift away so we know that we have to pray for that final perseverance. We have to pray for that final gift because without,

without God's help, we won't make it to the end. And that's where we wanna go, not just to live today in faith, not just to walk today in love and in hope, but to make it all the way to the end so we can actually get, you can acquire, right? The one whom we love, the object of our hope and the one in whom we believe. So let's pray for that.

Pray for that gift of final perseverance. Pray for the growth in faith. And pray that one day, every one of us will stand before the one in whom we believe and be met with that gaze of love. I'm praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow.

God bless. God bless.