The Virtue of Faith (Talk)

 We will be starting up a men's holy hour/rosary one a month at our parish, followed by beer and wings and a talk on the virtues. Sharing my notes here, so I have them somewhere, since I am giving the talk this month. 

I'd ask you to pray for this initiative, since I'm the one who proposed it and offered to head it up, so feeling a little pressure. Build up the men, build up the family, build up the Church is the idea. 

Thanks so much.

The format for these talks will be to take one virtue each month and discuss, as well as its antecedent vice which is contrary to that virtue, so we can live out the former and resist the latter in our lives as Catholic men. 

For the first three months, the plan is to discuss the theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity), and subsequent months the cardinal virtues. These talks are not meant to be academic or strictly theological, but practical.: how do we live it out? How do we combat vice in each area? Additionally, each virtue will hopefully be paired with one of the twelve fruits of the Holy Ghost. 

For this month, that fruit is "Faith" as well.

So what is Virtue?

St. Augustine, referring to the infused virtues : 

-virtue is a good quality of the soul enabling man to live well, which no one can use for evil, produced in man by God without man’s assistance. The nature of virtue is understood more clearly by comparing it with the gifts and fruits of the Holy Ghost and with the beatitudes.

-In other words, the virtuous man is a good man--not good as meriting any thing of our own right, but because of the cooperation and assent of the will with grace. One thing that separates us from the Protestants is that we understand that the will and right reason operate in *co-operation with divine grace.

-Why is it important to live the virtues as a Catholic man? Because we are a light on a hill, as St. Matthew says, which no one hides under a bushel. Correspondingly, when we are beholden to vice, we give rise to scandal among the pagans, for we set a bad example in imitation of our Master, who is Christ.

-The fruits of the Holy Ghost (Prumer, with St. Paul, lists 12: charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continence, chastity) are habits accompanying sanctifying grace whereby a man is well disposed to receive the inspirations and movements of the Holy Ghost. In the gifts, therefore, it is the Holy Ghost Himself who inspires man towards goodness ; in the virtues man is moved by right reason aided by grace. The gifts of the Holy Ghost are seven in number : wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, piety, fortitude, fear.

1. In relation to their origin, virtues are either *acquired or *infused, according as man acquires them by his own acts or God infuses them together with sanctifying grace.

2. In relation to their object, virtues are either intellectual, moral, or theological. The intellectual virtues perfect man in his understanding of truth (whether speculative or practical), and of these there are five: understanding, wisdom, knowledge, prudence, art. The moral virtues perfect the powers of man to enable him to use correctly and well the means to his supernatural end ; these can be reduced to four as being more fundamental than the rest and are known as the cardinal virtues : prudence, fortitude, justice, temperance. — The theological virtues have God as their immediate object and are given and revealed by God alone ; these are three in number : faith, hope, and charity.

The virtue of FAITH

In our culture today, we have a crisis of faith. Not only among the secular, the non-Catholics and non-Christians, but among our own people. A Pew Research study found that only 1/3 of Catholics today actually believe in the True Presence. That is scandalous. But because belief in the True Presence is a reflection of the virtue of faith, we should not be surprised our Church is in the state it is in, among both laity, clergy, and the episcopy alike.

Faith is, as St. Paul says, "that which gives substance to our hopes, which convinces us of things that we cannot see” It gives us fortitude to endure suffering when we are presented with it, because we have a WHY. St. Peter in his letter says we should “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope.” This is why it is important to KNOW our faith, so that we can LIVE our faith. 

The properties of faith: Faith is supernatural, free, infallible and certain.

It is not enough to have faith and not live it out. "For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was," as St. James says. The Code of Canon Law (c. 1325, § 1) expresses the precept in the following manner : “ Christ’s faithful are obliged to profess their faith publicly whenever their silence, subterfuge, or manner of acting imply an implicit denial of faith, a contempt of religion, or an insult to God, or scandal to the neighbour.”

VICES CONTRARY TO FAITH

Sins against faith are those of commission and those of omission.

1. Sins of omission contrary to faith are : a) the non-fulfilment of those precepts which enjoin internal and external acts of faith (cf. n. 194 sqq.) ; b) deliberate ignorance of the truths of faith which ought to be known.

2. By commission a person sins against faith either by excess or by defect.

Sins of excess contrary to faith are rash credulity and superstition. A man commits the sin of rash credulity when he believes as part of faith truths which in fact are not, such as a man who gives credence to private revelations too easily. Superstition, which is a form of profession of disbelief through an external act, is contrary both to faith and to the virtue of religion (cf. below, n. 430).

Sins of defect contrary to faith are committed by infidelity whether negative or positive. Negative (material, involuntary) infidelity is the lack of faith in a person to whom the faith has never been sufficiently declared. Positive infidelity (formal) is the culpable lack of faith in a person who does not want to believe. Paganism, Judaism, and heresy are three types of positive infidelity. Apostasy which is a complete lack of faith in a person who previously possessed the faith is a form of heresy. Schism is distinct from heresy, inasmuch as there exists a stubborn refusal to be obedient to the Pope. Therefore schism, although not directly contrary to faith, is nearly always conjoined to heresy, because schismatics not only refuse obedience to the Pope but also deny his primacy.

I think it's also important to note that faith is a gift of God. It is given to those who sincerely ask, but it does not come from us initially. Our Lord says to all, 'seek and you will find,' and that applies to the virtue of faith. As it says in scripture, "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast."

We receive the gift of faith by asking for it; but faith is not a guarantee. We can lose faith (apostosy), and we can doubt, which is human. But we cultivate this virtue through prayer, the sacraments, and the Mass. 

I think it's important that faith gives us a reason to keep living. "Keep the faith" is a secular as well as a religious term. As Victor Frankl, who survived the Holocaust, famously said, “He, who has a why to live for, can bear with almost any how.”

Faith is also a path to freedom. It allows us to immitate St. Paul, who discovered the "secret" to life by being content in all circumstances. This is because all things--good and bad--come from the hand of God, as Job notes. We cannot be saved without faith. We especially need this virtue at the hour of our death.

But our faith is not just in anything, but in Jesus Christ the God who became man. We live out our faith in the context of our religion, which is the Church that Christ founded, the Catholic faith. The formal object of faith is the primary and essential Truth. We are given the blueprints for the faith in the Catechism, the Beatitudes, the Ten Commandments, and the example of Christ himself.