What is faith? What does it mean to have faith? How can a person have faith? What does faith in the Church mean believing in? In whom? Questions about the Catholic faith are both many and complex. The Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), and other Magisterial documents (the Bishops' Writings) can help us all find answers about faith.
So now let's see some questions about faith through the lens of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
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The foundations of the faith can be summarized in the Baptismal Profession of Faith, the Symbol of Nicaea Constantinople, and in the Symbol of the Apostles. Each of them illustrates the foundations of faith in their own way.
You can find the Symbol of the Apostles and of Nicaea Constantinople in this other article.
We can also add that:
· Christ is the Mediator and the Fullness of all Revelation (Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum 2) and that “no new public revelation is therefore to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ” (CCC 66).
· “The Christian faith is first of all a personal adhesion of man to God” (CCC 150). In the same vein, we can cite Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Deus caritas est, which says: “At the origin of being a Christian, there is not an ethical decision or a great idea, but the encounter with an event, with a Person, who gives life a new horizon and thereby its decisive orientation.”
To deepen the foundations of faith, you can refer to the First Part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is entitled “The Profession of Faith.”
When we ask questions about faith, questions about God automatically arise.
We can find answers in the first chapter of the First Part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in numbers 31 to 38.
The number 31 shows that the man who seeks God discovers certain “ways” to access knowledge of God. These ways are also called “proofs of God's existence.”
The following number, 32, shows that from the world, it is possible to know God as the origin and end of the universe: “From the movement and the becoming, the contingency, the order and the beauty of the world, we can know God as the origin and end of the universe. ”
By taking up the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation of the Second Vatican Council, the Church shows that God can be known with certainty by the light of reason. This is the purpose of number 36 of the Catechism: “Holy Church, our mother, holds and teaches that God, the principle and end of all things, can be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason from created things”
Other points:
Michel-Yves Bolloré, Olivier Bonnassies, God, science, evidence
Matthieu Lavagna, Be rational, become Catholic
Arianism is a heresy that refused to believe that Christ has the same substance as the Father. The First Council of Nicaea of 325 showed that Father and Son are the same God.
Numbers 464 to 469 of the Catechism confirm that “Jesus Christ is true God and true man.” (CCC 464). And number 469 adds that “The Church thus confesses that Jesus is inseparably true God and true man. He is truly the Son of God who became man, our brother, and this without ceasing to be God, our Lord.”
The Trinity is particularly discussed in numbers 249 to 267 of the Catechism.
Ranked like a dogma, the Trinity is One: “we do not confess three gods, but one God in three persons” (CCC 253).
The Trinity is presented as “the most fundamental and essential teaching in the “hierarchy of the truths of faith,” number 234 of the Catechism reminds us.
This number adds that “The entire history of salvation is none other than the history of the way and the means by which the true and only God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to, reconciles, and unites men who turn away from sin. ”
Finally, number 266 enlightens on what the Catholic faith invites us to: “The Catholic faith consists of this: to venerate one God in the Trinity, and the Trinity in the Unity, without confounding the persons, without dividing the substance: for another is the person of the Father, another that of the Son, another that of the Holy Spirit; but of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, one is the divinity, equal to the glory, co-eternal to the majesty. ”
Discover more about the mystery of the Trinity.
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Several numbers of the catechism on providence and the scandal of evil provide some answers. These include numbers 309 to 324.
Number 311 reminds us that men freely choose their paths, and that thus they can “deviate.” In addition, it is also recalled that “God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of evil. ”
The existence of evil can also be explained, through number 324: “Faith gives us the certainty that God would not allow evil if he did not bring out good from evil itself, by ways that we will only fully know in eternal life. ”
We ask ourselves many questions about life after death. The Catechism of the Catholic Church enlightens us on these different notions, which can be very difficult to understand. We find this at the end of the First Part of the Catechism in Article 12 entitled “I Believe in Eternal Life”.
The Trinity is particularly discussed in numbers 1021 to 1022 of the Catechism. Number 1022 explains that “each man receives in his immortal soul his eternal retribution from his death in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ, either through purification, or to enter immediately into the beatitude of Heaven, or to damn himself immediately forever.”
A note at the end of the number recalls the well-known quote by John of the Cross “In the evening of our life, we will be judged on love.”
Find out more in our article What is the Last Judgment?
What we call paradise is referred to in the Catechism as “Heaven”. The Catechism describes heaven as a “perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed”, and as a “state of supreme and definitive happiness” (CCC 1024).
Heaven is particularly discussed in numbers 1023 to 1029 of the Catechism.
Find out more in our article What is Heaven?
Purgatory, also called the final purification in the Catechism, refers to the “final purification of the chosen, which is quite distinct from the punishment of the damned.” (CCC 1031).
Number 1030 of the Catechism tells us: “Those who die in the grace and friendship of God, but imperfectly purified, although assured of their eternal salvation, suffer after their death a purification, in order to obtain the holiness necessary to enter into the joy of heaven.”
Purgatory is mentioned in numbers 1030 to 1032 of the Catechism.
Find out more in our article What is Purgatory?
Hell is a reality. The Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity in number 1035 of the Catechism: “The Church's teaching affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. (...) the main punishment of hell consists in the eternal separation from God "
Hell is particularly discussed in numbers 1033 to 1037 of the Catechism.
Find out more in our article Does Hell Really Exist?
Final Judgment is particularly discussed in numbers 1038 to 1041 of the Catechism.
We can learn several things, for example, that:
There are, of course, many other questions we can ask ourselves about the Catholic faith. For example:
On Hozana, discover communities of prayer to rediscover, deepen or boost your faith!
Such as, for example: