Faith is a gift from God we should not take for granted by PETER KWASNIEWSKI for Life Site News
‘Faith cometh by hearing,” says St. Paul, ‘and hearing by the preaching of Christ.’
At the start of September, the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church offers us an interesting conundrum. From 1955 to 1970, September 3 was the feastday of St. Pius X, while March 12 remained the feastday of St. Gregory the Great (being the actual day on which he died, and still celebrated as such in the Tridentine calendar and among Eastern Christians). However, in 1969, the committee that revised the liturgical calendar moved St. Gregory to September 3, the date of his episcopal consecration, and moved Pius X to August 21, the day after this pope died. So however one looks at it, these two popes are mysteriously connected to one another. And it is indeed fitting that they be so associated, for Gregory established the final form of the Roman Canon, the central prayer of the Latin Mass, while Pius reestablished the primacy of the chant called Gregorian, the central music of the Roman rite.
Both of these popes were men who lived heroically by the theological virtue of faith; both were great preachers and proclaimers of the Catholic Faith.
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“Faith cometh by hearing,” says St. Paul, “and hearing by the preaching of Christ” (Rom 10:17). We learn about the Gospel of Our Lord through its ministers and defenders, our parents and godparents, our priests and bishops. We hear the beauty and profundity of God’s word in the sinuous lines of Gregorian chant, we climb the spiritual Mount Tabor in the solemn stillness of the Canon of the Mass, so that both music and silence become heralds of the mysteries. Those who came to faith later in life were often introduced to it by those of the Catholic laity who preach the truth in season and out of season. Always there is a word and a listening ear.
In whatever way the truths of the Gospel reach us and penetrate our hearts, it is necessary for our well-being as Christians that we receive sound religious instruction together with sacramental initiation. This dual source of Christian maturity—moral and intellectual catechesis coupled with participation in divine life through the sacraments—is beautifully illustrated by the conversation of Christ with Nicodemus (Jn 3:1–21), where Our Lord is at once catechizing Nicodemus about the meaning of redemption and leading him by the hand to see the necessity of baptism.
