Results for

Paragraph 166

"Faith is a personal act - the free response of the human person to the initiative of God who reveals himself. But faith is not an isolated act. No one can believe alone, just as no one can live alone. You have not given yourself faith as you have not given yourself life. the..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 158

""Faith seeks understanding":[33] it is intrinsic to faith that a believer desires to know better the One in whom he has put his faith, and to understand better what He has revealed; a more penetrating knowledge will in turn call forth a greater faith, increasingly set afire by..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 145

"The Letter to the Hebrews, in its great eulogy of the faith of Israel's ancestors, lays special emphasis on Abraham's faith: "By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was to..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 159

"Faith and science: "Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 162

"Faith is an entirely free gift that God makes to man. We can lose this priceless gift, as St. Paul indicated to St. Timothy: "Wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith."[44] To live,..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 186

"From the beginning, the apostolic Church expressed and handed on her faith in brief formulae normative for all.[1] But already very early on, the Church also wanted to gather the essential elements of her faith into organic and articulated summaries, intended especially for..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 26

"We begin our profession of faith by saying: "I believe" or "We believe". Before expounding the Church's faith, as confessed in the Creed, celebrated in the liturgy and lived in observance of God's commandments and in prayer, we must first ask what "to believe" means. Faith is..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 150

"Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. As personal adherence to God and assent to his truth, Christian faith differs from our faith in any human person. It is..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 160

"To be human, "man's response to God by faith must be free, and... therefore nobody is to be forced to embrace the faith against his will. the act of faith is of its very nature a free act."[39] "God calls men to serve him in spirit and in truth. Consequently they are bound to..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 163

"Faith makes us taste in advance the light of the beatific vision, the goal of our journey here below. Then we shall see God "face to face", "as he is".[47] So faith is already the beginning of eternal life: When we contemplate the blessings of faith even now, as if gazing at a..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 164

"Now, however, "we walk by faith, not by sight";[49] we perceive God as "in a mirror, dimly" and only "in part".[50] Even though enlightened by him in whom it believes, faith is often lived in darkness and can be put to the test. the world we live in often seems very far from the..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 165

"It is then we must turn to the witnesses of faith: to Abraham, who "in hope... believed against hope";[51] to the Virgin Mary, who, in "her pilgrimage of faith", walked into the "night of faith"[52] in sharing the darkness of her son's suffering and death; and to so many others:..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 168

"It is the Church that believes first, and so bears, nourishes and sustains my faith. Everywhere, it is the Church that first confesses the Lord: "Throughout the world the holy Church acclaims you", as we sing in the hymn Te Deum; with her and in her, we are won over and brought..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 170

"We do not believe in formulae, but in those realities they express, which faith allows us to touch. "The believer's act [of faith] does not terminate in the propositions, but in the realities [which they express]."[56] All the same, we do approach these realities with the help..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 171

"The Church, "the pillar and bulwark of the truth", faithfully guards "the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints". She guards the memory of Christ's words; it is she who from generation to generation hands on the apostles' confession of faith.[57] As a mother who..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 949

"...and fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers."[480] Communion in the faith. the faith of the faithful is the faith of the Church, received from the apostles. Faith is a treasure of life which is enriched by being shared."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 35

"...himself to man, and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith.(so) the proofs of God's existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 93

""By this appreciation of the faith, aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth, the People of God, guided by the sacred teaching authority (Magisterium),. . . receives. . . the faith, once for all delivered to the saints. . . the People unfailingly adheres to this faith,..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 114

"3. Be attentive to the analogy of faith.[82] By "analogy of faith" we mean the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves and within the whole plan of Revelation."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 146

"Abraham thus fulfils the definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1: "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen":[7] "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness."[8] Because he was "strong in his faith", Abraham became the..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 147

"The Old Testament is rich in witnesses to this faith. the Letter to the Hebrews proclaims its eulogy of the exemplary faith of the ancestors who "received divine approval".[10] Yet "God had foreseen something better for us": the grace of believing in his Son Jesus, "the pioneer..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 148

"The Virgin Mary most perfectly embodies the obedience of faith. By faith Mary welcomes the tidings and promise brought by the angel Gabriel, believing that "with God nothing will be impossible" and so giving her assent: "Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be [done] to..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 167

""I believe" (Apostles' Creed) is the faith of the Church professed personally by each believer, principally during Baptism. "We believe" (Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed) is the faith of the Church confessed by the bishops assembled in council or more generally by the liturgical..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 173

"...scattered throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, having received the faith from the apostles and their disciples. . . guards [this preaching and faith] with care, as dwelling in but a single house, and similarly believes as if having but one soul and a..."

View Full Paragraph →

Paragraph 185

"Whoever says "I believe" says "I pledge myself to what we believe." Communion in faith needs a common language of faith, normative for all and uniting all in the same confession of faith."

View Full Paragraph →