The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 23: We Believe (2024)

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

While faith is deeply personal, it is not an isolated act. Today, Fr. Mike reflects on the reality that our faith is communal. It is lived out and passed down in the context of community. We also learn that faith is truly the beginning of eternal life. Despite the sufferings of this world, when we walk by faith, we experience a taste of heaven here and now. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 163-169. 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 a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in Scripture, and passed down to the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a 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 a heavenly home. It is day 23. We're reading paragraphs 163 to 169. Few reminders before we get started. I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the Foundations of Faith approach, but you can follow along in that one or with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Also, if you want to download your own Catechism in a year reading plan,

you can visit ascensionpress.com slash C-I-Y. And lastly, you can click follow or subscribe or whatever that word is indicating that you are following or subscribing in your podcast app for daily notifications. As I said, it is day 23, or Michael Jordan Day, as I like to refer to it. And we're reading paragraphs 163 to 169. One thing to keep in mind is we've been following article one in that section, the response, right? The, I believe we've been talking about for the last number of paragraphs. Now the last two paragraphs

here, did I say two? I meant to say three. Paragraphs 163, 164, and 165 are the conclusion of the I believe. I'm going to talk about faith as the beginning of eternal life. We know that even though we believe, you know, faith is so good. Faith is an incredible gift and we actually have the one in whom we believe. And we possess the Lord. He's with us, right? We profess our faith in Him and we have Him. He gives Himself to us at the same time. We walk by faith and not by sight. At the same time, we continue to walk in a world that's broken, in a world that is still full of darkness. We're going to talk about that a little bit today. Those three first, those three last paragraphs, but they're first for us today, right? 163 to 165. But then we jump into 166,

and that is the second article of this section. We just finished, we will finish, I believe, and we'll start this article two called We Believe. And it's really important because not only do we profess individual faith, we profess a faith that has been handed on to us for generations. We profess a faith that is deeply personal, but it's not isolated. And that's one of the things that paragraph 166 says, faith is a personal act, but it's faith is not an isolated act. And so we recognize that, yes, at times we say, I believe, and that is great. And that's incredible. And there are other times that we say we believe. In fact, you could say it like this, every time we say I believe, what's implied is we believe. And every time we say we believe, what's implied is I personally believe. Hope that makes sense,

because we're going to talk about this, not only the faith that exists in us, that we place our faith in the Lord himself, but also the faith that's been handed on to us and that we're called to hand on to others. That's that personal but not isolated or personal but not private aspect of faith that we're gonna talk about a little bit today. And so let's open up the prayer. Father in heaven, we give you praise, we give you glory.

We believe in you. And also as individuals, we can say, and I believe in you, Father. We can say, I trust you, Jesus. We can say, I need you, Holy Spirit. And that's all true. Today, we also say, we believe and we need and we trust you because we're not alone.

In fact, Father, this community of people who are listening to this Catechism and striving to learn more and more about You, striving to have faith that seeks understanding, we need Your help. We need each other's prayers and we cannot do this without You. Jesus, we know that without You, we can do nothing. So come to our need come to our weakness Come to our aid with your help We make this prayer in your name Jesus Christ the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit Amen, as I said it is day 23. We're reading paragraphs 163 to 169

Faith the beginning of eternal life Faith makes us taste in advance the light of the beatific vision, the goal of our journey here below. Then we shall see God face to face as He is. So faith is already the beginning of eternal life. As St. Basil once wrote, When we contemplate the blessings of faith even now, as if gazing at a reflection in a mirror, it is as if we already possessed the wonderful things which our faith assures us we shall one day enjoy. Now however, we walk by faith, not by sight.

We perceive God as in a mirror dimly and only in part. Even though enlightened by Him in whom it believes, faith is often lived in darkness and can be put to the test. The world we live in often seems very far from the one promised us by faith. Our experiences of evil and suffering, injustice and death seem to contradict the good news. They can shake our faith and become a temptation against it. It is then we must turn to the witnesses of faith, to Abraham, who in hope believed against hope, to the Virgin Mary, who in her pilgrimage of faith walked into the night of faith, in

sharing the darkness of her son's suffering and death, and to so many others. As the letter to the Hebrews states, Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. Article 2 We Believe Faith is a personal act, the free response of the human person to the initiative of God who reveals himself.

But faith is not an isolated act. The free response of the human person to the initiative of God who reveals himself. But faith is not an isolated act. No one can believe alone, just as no one can live alone. You have not given yourself faith as you have not given yourself life. The believer has received faith from others and should hand it on to others. Our love for Jesus and for our neighbor impels us to speak to others about our faith. Each believer is thus a link in the great chain of believers. I cannot believe without being carried by the faith of others, and by my faith I help

support others in the faith. I believe, as we state in the Apostles Creed, is the faith of the Church professed personally by each believer, principally during baptism. We believe, as stated in the Asioconstantapolytum Creed, is the faith of the church confessed by the bishops assembled in counsel or more generally by the liturgical assembly of believers. I believe is also the church our mother responding to God by faith as she teaches us to say both I believe and we believe. Lord, look upon the faith of Your church. It is the church that believes first, and so bears, nourishes, and sustains my faith.

Everywhere, it is the church that first confesses the Lord. Throughout the world, the Holy Church acclaims You as we sing in the hymn to Deum. With her and in her, we are one the hymn to Deum. With her and in her, we are one over and brought to confess, I believe, we believe. It is through the church that we receive faith and new life in Christ by baptism. In the Rituale Romanum, the minister of baptism asks the catechumen, what do you ask of God's Church? And the answer is faith. The next question, what does faith offer you? And the answer is eternal life. Salvation comes from God alone, but because we receive the life of faith through the Church,

she is our mother. As Faustus of Riaz wrote, we believe the Church as the mother of our new birth, and not in the church as if she were the author of our salvation. Because she is our mother. She is also our teacher in the faith. Okay, so there we are, paragraphs 163-169, the conclusion of article 1 and the beginning of article 2. Conclusion of article 1 being, I believe, and the beginning of article 2, we believe,

as we have heard. Now, at the conclusion of Article 1, right, paragraphs 163 to 165, one of the things that I just am so grateful for, that the church highlights and spotlights, is the fact that, yes, absolutely, faith is the apprehension, right? We have what we long for in faith. We possess our Lord and He possesses us. I mean, that's such a great gift. And yet it's so good. First line of 163. Faith makes us taste in advance the light of the Beate Faith vision, the goal of our journey here below, because we know that then we shall see God face to face. So again, faith is the beginning of eternal life. You know, I believe it was C.S. Lewis who wrote and maybe the book, The Great Divorce. The Great Divorce is a book all about the divorce or the difference between heaven and hell.

And it's this kind of imaginary telling of the difference between heaven and hell. And at one point, one of the characters in the book says, those who are in hell will look back on their whole lives and realize that they were always in hell. And those who are in heaven will look back on their lives and realize that they were always in heaven. Now, obviously, if we have the choice, we get to choose whether

we choose hell or choose heaven. But what C.S. Lewis was trying to communicate there is that those who walk by faith, then in a certain sense, we already have the beginning of eternal life. And if we keep saying yes to the Lord, then we are living heaven now. And even in the midst of, again, the valley of the shadow of death, even in the midst of tears. And those who are saying no to God will find that they didn't go to hell at their deaths. They were choosing hell with their lives. Does that make sense?

And that's kind of a C.S. Lewis thing. It's not necessarily a formulation of the Catholic Church that I'm aware of, but I think it's a helpful image for what we're saying here, which is faith makes us taste in advance the light of the beatific vision. But in paragraph 164 it says, Now, however, we walk by faith and not by sight, and even though enlightened by God in whom we believe, faith is often lived in darkness and can be put to the test. I do not need to tell any of us. That is the case.

Every single one of us. Our experiences of evil and suffering, injustice and death, they seem to contradict the good news. And as paragraph 164 says, they can shake our faith and become a temptation against it. But you know what is also a reality. Not just our experiences of evil and suffering and justice and death But even the experiences of our own heart our own heart that wants to run away, right? Our own heart that says no my will not thy will be done

And so that's that's the moment where paragraph 165 reminds us that's when we have to turn It's we realize this it is not just I believe this is not just my faith We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses as the letter to the Hebrews says. And so we have witnesses of faith. We have the two named here, Abraham and the Virgin Mary. But in Hebrews chapter 11, it goes through the hole, not the hole, but many, many, that kind of pantheon of the saints of the old covenant,

the saints of the old Testament, those people who bore witness to faith even in the midst of a world full of evil and suffering and death and their own broken hearts. And so we are reminded even at the end of that article, I believe that we never believe in isolation. That's why in the beginning of article two, we believe I really love how they formulate this paragraph. 166 faith is a personal act, the free response of the human person to the initiative of God who reveals himself rights, a complete gift, but it's a personal act. But faith is not an isolated act. And to even almost demonstrate this,

they say no one can believe alone, just as no one can live alone. I remember hearing the example someone had offered about if you were to build a wooden chair on your own with no help from anyone whatsoever. What that means was would be that you don't just go into the woods with an axe or with a saw, you have to actually create an axe or create a saw from scratch, right? You don't just kind of like while you use this carving knife in order to like, you know, whittle down the branches to form the legs of the chair, you would have to create, you have to go mine for ore, right? And find metal somewhere. And then it's the image behind this is that we could say, I can live alone.

But none of us could really, truly live alone and thrive. Because even those of us who have so little and need so much help, even those of us who are super strong, we're always relying on what other people have done, whether that's in our current situation or those who have gone before us. And they left us a legacy like electricity, for example, or the discovery of fire, for example. Right? That recognition that no one can believe alone, just like no one can live alone.

The next line, you have not given yourself faith just as you have not given yourself life. And so we have that recognition that what we're called to then do is we're called to not only receive the faith that's been handed on to us and believe in the faith and live in the walk in the faith, but we're also called to pass on the faith because again, this is not an individual, Christianity is not an's not a this is a team effort. This is a family endeavor And so we recognize that it's not merely I believe it has to be of course. It's a personal act But it's also we believe it's a communal act. It's a communal

Life that we live especially a communal faith that we profess. The last thing is in paragraphs 168 and 169. We recognize that how has faith been handed to us? Not by some nebulous idea of the church, but actually by the church. By the church that Jesus himself has founded. That we're given faith in baptism. Again, here we go. It is through the church that we receive faith

and new life in Christ by baptism. In fact, that's highlighted in the baptismal ritual where we say, what do you ask of God's church faith and what does faith offer you? Eternal life. We get that through faith and baptism. It's such an incredible gift. And because of this,

because this gift comes through the church, we can rightly say that the church is our mother. Of course, God is the author of our faith, right? God is the author of everything. But since the eternal life comes through the church in a real way, the church gets to be our mother. And so we call the Catholic Church, Holy Mother Church sometimes, which is a really profound and really fitting way to describe the church for us. Because the church is both teacher, Magister, right, Magisterium and Mater and Mother. The church teaches us and mothers us. The church gave birth to us and feeds us and teaches us and raises us.

That's one of the reasons why, yes, it is absolutely, I believe, but it's also we believe. And I love this because here is this community of the catechism in here that is like a subset, right? Where I'm kind of a subset of the church saying, okay, I'm a member of Holy Mother Church. Yes, I'm a member, I'm a child, essentially, of the church. Of course, we're children of God the Father. And I'm also a member of this class, you know,

this member of this subset of this group of people who are saying, okay, Father in heaven, continue to reveal yourself to me as you've revealed yourself to generations, others who have gone before you and I, others who have gone before us, they learned this. They wrote this, they passed this on to us. And now it's our turn.

It's our turn to learn, to grow in this, to live this, and to pass it on to others. Here we go, this is just so good. I think it's so important that we recognize that it is, even when we say we believe, what we're also saying is, this is what I believe. And when we are by ourselves, maybe praying the rosary, we pray the Apostle's Creed and say, I believe, we're realizing we're not alone. And you are not alone. I am praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow.

God bless.