In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The theological virtues are three: faith, hope and charity. They receive this name because they are
gifts from God. They are special Graces with which He seeks out of love to share His same
life or Divine nature with us. That is why with the help of these supernatural virtues
we can truly live as His children, following in the footsteps of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And in order to achieve this, God in His infinite goodness
grants us this special help through these three gifts: faith, hope and charity."
The theological virtues have as their origin and objective the One and Triune God.
The theological virtues are the guarantee of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit
in the faculties of the human being.
Within the wonderful work of Salvation,
it is the Holy Spirit who is called to restore our likeness to God. For this reason these
virtues were placed by Him in our hearts on the day of our baptism, but as a seed. Therefore we
have the responsibility to collaborate with Him in the growth and improvement of this seed.
And like all Divine seeds, they will not be able to grow and perfect themselves
without being constantly watered and nourished by the Grace of God.
We need to realize the great importance of leading a true life of prayer and Sacraments
which are wonderful and inexhaustible sources of Divine Grace.
Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and in all that He has told
and revealed to us. It is man's response to God, who goes out to meet Him and God reveals Himself,
God reveals His love, His mercy, His greatness, His power and His will.
The word "believe" comes from the Latin "credere", a verb that is formed by two roots,
"kred" that refers to the heart, and "deh" that refers to the action of placing or putting;
so we can say that Faith is "putting our heart in God."
And this means trusting in Him, in His love, in His word, in His commandments,
in His promises, in other words to believe in God because there is full and absolute trust in Him.
Our Lord said to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque: "If you want to please Me trust Me, if you
want to please Me more trust more, immensely more". That is why the letter to the Hebrews
chapter 11, verse 6 tells us: "Now it is impossible to please God without faith,
since anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek Him."
Faith is the capacity that the Holy Spirit gives us to go beyond everything,
to raise us above everything in every situation, in every circumstance of
our life always recognizing God, recognizing His Will and seeing things as God sees them.
The way of seeing things as God sees them is very important because this will allow
us for example to find a meaning for the pain of a situation we don't like and understand
suffering in our lives. Suffering and pain give us a superior meaning that unites us more to God
that makes us grow in holiness and allows us to collaborate with Him in His work of salvation.
Abraham is the model of faith that Sacred Scripture or the Bible proposes to us,
but the Virgin Mary is the most perfect realization of faith.
"It was by faith that Abraham obeyed the call to set out for a country that was the inheritance
given to him and his descendants, and that he set out without knowing where he was going.
By faith he sojourned in the Promised Land as though it were not his,
living in tents with Isaac and Jacob who were heirs with him of the same promise. He looked
forward to the well-founded city, designed and built by God. It was equally by faith that Sarah
in spite of being past the age, was made able to conceive because she believed that He who had
made the promise was faithful to it. Because of this, there came from one man and one who already
had the mark of death on him, descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the grains
of sand on the seashore which cannot be counted. All these died in faith before receiving any
of the things that had been promised, but they saw them in the far distance and welcomed them,
recognizing that they were only strangers and nomads on earth.
People who use such terms about themselves make it quite plain that they are in search of a homeland.
If they had meant the country they came from, they would have had the opportunity to return to it;
but in fact they were longing for a better homeland, their heavenly homeland. That is why
God is not ashamed to be called their God, since He has founded the city for them. It was by faith
that Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac. He offered to sacrifice his only son
even though he had yet to receive what had been promised, and he had been told: Isaac is the one
through whom your name will be carried on. He was confident that God had the power even to raise the
dead; and so, figuratively speaking he was given back Isaac from the dead." (Hebrews 11:8-19)
By faith, Mary accepted the announcement and the promise that the Archangel Saint Gabriel brought
her, believing "for nothing is impossible to God." (Luke 1:37) For this reason even
without fully understanding the announcement, the Virgin Mary immediately gives her consent:
"You see before you the Lord's servant, let it happen to me as you have said."(Luke 1:38).
By this faith, Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit greeted her saying: "Yes, blessed is
she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled." (Luke 1:45). By
this faith "from now onwards all generations will call me blessed" (Luke 1:48). Throughout her life
and until her last test, when Jesus her son died on the cross her faith did not waver. Mary did
not stop believing in the fulfillment of God's word. For all these reasons,
the Church embodies in the Virgin Mary the most perfect realization of the faith
While it is true that faith is a gift from God,
it also is true that in faith the human intelligence and will cooperate with divine grace
which helps us through the interior aids of the Holy Spirit to move the heart,
direct it to God, accept and believe the truth. Saint Thomas Aquinas said: "Believing is an act
of the understanding that accepts divine truth by dominion of the will moved by God through grace"
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.