The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 25: Summary of Faith (2026)

Episode Date: January 25, 2026

As Catholics, we can’t pick and choose the areas of Church teaching we want to accept; we must believe the entire truth of the Faith because we believe in God, who has revealed it to us. Fr. Mike teaches us to pray daily to be good students as we learn and grow from our mother, the Church. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 176-184. 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's 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 through 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 our heavenly home. It is day 25. We're reading paragraphs 176 to 184. You guys, you know what it is?

You know what that means? This is the end of this article, the end of this. section. So it is Nugget Day. We have the in-brief, right, from 176 to 184. We have a number of these bullet points that are summarizing what we've been reading for the last couple of days. And it's very, very important, Nugget Day. Nugget Day on Day 25. As always, I am using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach. You can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your catechism in a year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com

slash C-I-Y. You can also click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily notifications. Also, I just, it's not enough to say thanks. I want to say thank you, but I do want to say thank you to all those who have supported the production of this podcast with prayers, your financial gifts. We couldn't do it. Literally could not do this podcast without you. Thank you so much. You know, today, as I said, Nugget Day, just little nuggets that we get summaries of what we've been hearing for the last number of days. We're going to talk about once again, going back to here's God's revelation. What's our response? Our response is faith, right? Where we don't just kind of give assent intellectually, but we give our personal adherence to God. So this is a personal

relationship. It's individual, it's personal, but at the same time, it is communal and it is not private, right, and that we don't come to the Lord in isolation. We also recognize that we don't just believe the ideas about God, but we believe in God. In fact, One of the articles, one of the nuggets today in Nugget 178, a.k.a. Paragraph 178 is the assertion we must believe in no one but God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Of course, we believe in human beings, but remember, we covered that. We don't believe in human beings in the same way that we believe in the Lord God himself. Because we can trust God fully. We just know we can't trust even good people.

We can't trust them as fully as we can trust God, who is truth itself, who can either deceive nor be deceived. We're also going to talk about how, as we said, believing is a personal act. It's also an ecclesial act. And we also recognize that we place our trust in the Lord fully, meaning that what he's revealed we say yes to with our whole selves. And that is the challenge of our lives. And that's the challenge we're going to talk about today. So let's say a prayer, Father in heaven, we know that you have revealed yourself to us so that we can entrust our entire selves back to you. You revealed the depth of your identity, the depth of your heart, the depth of the relationship that you want with us. We ask that you please give us hearts, give us minds that can

not simply grasp or apprehend the ideas, but hearts that trust you. Give us a will that will actually truly choose to say yes to you when we are certain and when we have questions, when we have no difficulties and when we are faced with difficulties. Lord God, send us your grace. Help us to have the grace of faith, the gift of faith, and then give us the courage to exercise the virtue of faith. We make this prayer in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. As I said, it's day 25. We're reading paragraphs in the brief 176 to 184. In brief, faith is a personalized. adherence of the whole man to God who reveals himself. It involves an assent of the intellect and will

to the self-revelation God is made through his deeds and words. To believe has thus a twofold reference to the person and to the truth, to the truth by trust in the person who bears witness to it. We must believe in no one but God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Faith is a supernatural natural gift from God. In order to believe, man needs the interior helps of the Holy Spirit. Believing is a human act, conscious and free, corresponding to the dignity of the human person. Believing is an ecclesial act. The church's faith precedes, engenders, supports, and nourishes our faith. The church is the mother of all believers. As St. Cyprian said, no one can have God as father who does not have the church as mother. Pope Paul V6th states,

We believe all that which is contained in the word of God, written or handed down, and which the church proposes for belief as divinely revealed. Faith is necessary for salvation. The Lord himself affirms he who believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who does not believe will be condemned. St. Thomas Aquinas stated, faith is a foretaste of the knowledge that will make us blessed in the life to come. What a gift. Here we are. Faith is a foretaste of the knowledge that will make us blessed in the life to come.

We recognize that, again, we only grasp us through a mirror darkly, right? We understand in shadow, even though God has given himself to us and has revealed himself to us in a complete and a full way, it's still mediated, right? We recognize that while God's revelation of himself is many ways you could say complete, right? that the son is the full revelation of the father, our apprehension, our grasp, our understanding of his self-revelation is going to be limited by our finite minds, by our finite hearts. And so we recognize that faith is a foretaste of the knowledge that will make us blessed in the life to come, that in life to come, God's love, God's self, God's identity, God's being will not be mediated anymore.

We'll be his and he'll be ours completely. And that's so good. What an incredible gift. I want to go back to, you know, the beginning of this recognition. What we talked about for the last few days, faith, right? Faith is we submit our intellect and our will. It's a personal adherence of the whole man to God who reveals himself to us. And we recognize that if I give the Lord my full belief, right, my full faith,

I put my full trust in him, that I, by faith, I will what he wills. That's part of what that ultimately means. It involves a deeper sense of trust than an emotional faith. Emotional faith is I have the sense of trust. I have the feeling of trust. But if I'm going to get all the way down to what I'm going to call like heart faith, what it means is I'm not going to weigh out. Which of your statements do I believe?

And this is really important for us. Okay, let's drill down here. if I have this depth of faith, I'm not going to come before the Lord or come before the church and say, okay, what are the statements that I'm going to trust? What are the statements that I'm going to believe? If I have this depth of faith,

I'm not believing or trusting in. I don't have faith in the statements. I have faith in the one who makes the statements. I have faith in God alone as that paragraph 178 says. We must believe in no one but God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You know, I remember years ago there was a man who was, he was a Christian, and he was looking at the Catholic faith, and at some point someone had communicated to him that, no, when you know, when you become Catholic, you believe the whole thing. You believe everything that the Catholic Church professes and proclaims revealed by God.

And in fact, that's part of what we say. If a person is coming into full communion with the church, they make a profession of faith. What they say something along those lines of, I believe and profess all that the Catholic Church teaches, believes and proclaims and be revealed. by God. And this man in response, he said this, he said something I found so compelling, but also so disheartening. He said, I don't think I've ever believed everything about anything. And he was just being very honest, right? I don't think I've ever believed everything about anything. And yet here is the church that says, no, if you're going to come into this one faith, if you're coming into this communion with this, the church established by Jesus Christ himself, we assent, right, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we,

give our, we profess faith in everything the church declares. But I don't think I've ever believed everything about anything. Where does that come from for us who find ourselves in the church? And we say, yeah, no, I do profess. I do believe. What it comes from is not, it comes not the fact that we've, we've laid out all the teachings and said, oh, yep, this one checks out, this one checks out, this one checks out. We believe in these individual teachings, because we believe in the identity of the teacher. We believe these individual points of doctrine because we believe in the one who has revealed himself to us.

So we believe in God himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And because of that, because we believe in him, because we trust in him, here's his teacher. Here's the Magister, right? Here's the mater. Here's the mother and teacher of all the believers, all the faithful. And this is where we see that quote from St. Cyprian fitting into our lives. No one can have God as Father who does not have the church as mother because no one comes to the faith on their own. And so here's God who is the author of salvation, right?

But here's the church who becomes in many ways like the vehicle and later documents we're going to hear. The church is the sacrament of salvation. God is the author of all that. God's the author of all truth. He is truth itself. And then the church becomes the vehicle, the sacrament. That salvation comes to us. comes to us. And so, again, we don't believe in the church. We believe in God himself. And because we

trust God, because we have faith in God, we can profess the faith of the church without hesitation and with great zeal and great conviction. Now, we still wrestle and that's okay. We're going to keep wrestling the next, I don't know, 340 days, give or take, because we're on this journey together. And that's one of the things that I think is so powerful is this reality that, yeah, I'm going to have difficulties. I'm going to have questions. But that's why we're walking together. That's so good. You can have difficulties. You can have questions. That's why we're on this journey together. And so every day we have to pray. God, help me be a good student. Like truly, God, you are the author of all salvation. You are the source of all truth. Here's the church

that is the teacher, that is our mother, help me be a good student. Help me to be a beloved, you already are, a beloved child of the father. Help me to be a child who loves the father back. Help me be a child who loves that mother and teacher back. That's our prayer today. As we journey in the next couple days, we're going to keep going deeper and deeper into the creed, which is like into the articles of the creed. So excited. But with every step, We're not just trying to learn the data. We're trying to say yes to the one who is the author, the revealer of the data. So I'm praying for you that that happens in your life.

Please pray for me that continues to happen in my life. My name's Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.