The Elements of the ‘Act of Faith.’
The most important theological virtue that leads us to eternal life is NOT Faith but Charity. “Even if you have Faith that can move mountains but do not have Charity….your Faith is useless.” One cannot have Charity without Faith and we cannot Hope to have eternal life if we do not have Faith. So Hope and Charity are founded on Faith. And the Holy Father knows it is hopeless for us to reach Charity and Hope unless we first have Faith. Thus the ‘Year of Faith.’
But most PRESUME they have Faith just because they are baptized, just because they are ordained priest, just because they are consecrated bishops, just because they belong to well-known international ecclesial communities and just because they are holding a bible. This shows ignorance of ‘Act of Faith’ that is a sure sign of the absence of Faith.
During this ‘Year of Faith’ the Holy Father wants all of us, without exception to find out if we have the virtue of Faith. If we analyze the 58 proposals made by the Bishop’s Synod in Rome which will be the schema to be applied on the whole Catholic World this year, the proposals presume that all Bishops and priests have Faith and are just supposed to share it with others. In Philosophy we call it ‘deny the supposition’. The Pope did not say share your Faith with others. He said check first if you have Faith because the probability is great that you, whoever you are, does not have Faith…..many do not have the signs of Faith taught in the Liturgy..
All the problems of the Catholic Church is because of the absence of Faith. The problem of priests all around the world is due to absence of Faith. That problem could have been easily solved by simply sending them to a few chosen monasteries to make their neglected personal ‘Act of Faith.’ And the whole world could have been made better because of the Faith of believers. But the whole world is now in complete deterioration because the Catholics whose Faith should have conquered the world have no Faith. It boils down to ‘the inability to make the Act of Faith’. All the other problems as enumerated in the 58 proposals are just ramification caused by the absence of Faith. And none of those proposals can be acted upon unless we first receive the gift of Faith from God. And this is the rationale for the ‘Year of Faith.’
Let us again further describe the proper disposition needed for God to give us the virtue of Faith. This proper disposition is the end-goal of ‘conversion,’ which the Holy Father had described as the first step in evangelization without which the next steps, entrance into the kingdom of God, encounter with Jesus and the Holy Spirit and Eternal Life, are impossible.
Let us look at the picture of a person about to receive the grace of Faith from God. Let us look at his proper disposition that will make him deserving to receive the virtue of Faith from God. He has two images before his mind. On one side is the teachings of the Catholic way of life and on the other side is one’s own personal life. The two images are contradictory to each other. The image of the Catholic way of life might not be perfect or complete. But the person has no doubt that that is the way of life taught by Christ as explained by the Catholic Church. On the other hand the personal way of life though not described completely is clearly seen as disobedience to the Catholic way of life. This view is similar to St. Augustine’s City of God and City of man. This is the most neglected element in the ‘Act of Faith’….. the choice in the midst of a conflict.
The knowledge of the Catholic way of life must be a natural but complete understanding of the commandments of Christ as given by the Lord in the New Testament and as explained by the Catholic Church through her Vicar the Pope. One’s personal way of life, on the other hand, is a description of the disobediences of the soul against the Catholic way of life.
So the soul, still without Faith is standing in front of these two choices between two ways of lives. At this point a severe crisis will take place. The soul will be torn to pieces as he chooses between the two, on one side, the service of God that leads to Eternal Life but at the price of completely giving up one’s personal way of life of disobedience. Making the choice can tear apart a soul as described in the lives of St. Augustine and Blessed John Newman. But it is only in making the choice in favor of the Catholic way of life that the soul will have the proper disposition to be worthy to receive the supernatural virtue of Faith together with everything that comes with it.
St. Augustine described this as a ‘total horizontal change of direction in life’ made possible only by the grace of God. The life of the soul becomes totally unrecognizable because of the the change. Note that the soul progresses in his knowledge toward making the choice. Everything after the choice is the work of the grace of Faith that comes from God. It is reaching that crossroad that is the goal of the ‘Year of Faith.’ And the way before we can reach that crossroad is so rough as described by St. Augustine and Blessed John Newman it would be almost impossible for many because of the state of the world today. Just because it is very rough shall we just sit down and endanger the eternal salvation of our souls?
The crisis of St. Augustine was that he had come to love the Catholic way of life and he wanted to choose that way of life. If he chose that way of life he would have received the gift of Faith from God. But he could not give up his personal way of life which was in disobedience to the commandments in the Catholic way of life. And this conflict prevented him from making the ‘Act of Faith.’ He had to struggle in giving up his personal way of life to have the strength to choose the Catholic way of life. In the case of Blessed John Cardinal Newman the giving up of his personal way of life was easy though he also found it difficult but what prevented him from having the proper disposition to deserve to receive the virtue of Faith from God is the many non-Catholic doctrines that he had accumulated during his being Anglican, Anglo-Anglican, Evangelical, Libertarian, and via media. This made some of his well learned Anglican doctrines heretical thus he could not make the proper choice prior to conversion. His knowledge of Catholic doctrines were defective. He was faced with two defective choices. Fortunately, Pussey and Froude led him gently to the true Catholic Faith…he made the right choice, the Catholic Church, after correcting his erroneous doctrines around 1840….the day he ‘deconverted’ from Anglicanism and converted to the Church of Rome.The mind must be well-informed by these two choices and the free will must make the choice of one and completely abandoning the other. Thus when St. Augustine and Blessed John Newman made their ‘Act of Faith’ they also made their vow of chastity.