Wednesday, September 20 : Saint Charles de Foucauld

Faith is the virtue that Our Lord most often rewards and praises. Sometimes he praises love, as in the case of Mary Magdalen (Lk 7,37). Sometimes humility, but these are rare cases, and it is nearly always faith that earns his approval and reward. Why is this? No doubt because it is the most important of the virtues, if not the greatest, for it is the foundation of all the others, including charity, and it is the rarest of all. To have real faith, faith that inspires all one’s actions, and faith in the supernatural which tears the mask from the world and sees God in everything, which makes all things possible, which takes all meaning out of such words as worry, peril, fear, which makes us pass through life calmly, peacefully, happily, like a child holding its mother’s hand, which gives the soul perfect detachment from all material things, shewing it their emptiness and puerility; which gives to prayer the confidence of a child asking something he deserves from his father; a faith to which “all is falsehood except to do the will of God”; a faith that makes all appear in a new light, so that we see people in the likeness of God making us love them and respect them as the counterfoils of our Beloved, and do them all the good we can. It will help us to regard all other living things as aids to the winning of Heaven, for we can always give God praise for them, or use them, or renounce them. Faith will shew us the greatness of God and our own littleness. It will make us undertake whatever is pleasing to God without hesitation or false shame or fear and without looking back. Ah! such faith is rare indeed. My God, give me this faith; my God, I believe, help thou my unbelief; my God, let me believe and love.

Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team