the natural light of our reason, with the aid of which we
may comprehend His revelations. God bestows upon us thus, through the
virtue of faith, a share in His own wisdom. The supernatural grace of
hope turns our thought heavenward, gives us an incentive to co-operate
with grace.

The supernatural virtue of charity renders us capable of loving God in
a worthy and meritorious manner and of loving that which God loves.

As the child arrives at the age of discretion, and obtains the right
use of reason, he is obliged to practise these virtues, and thus I
strengthen his soul and grow in grace.

We are obliged to awaken frequently faith, hope, and charity towards
God and our neighbor, in a practical manner. By the possession,
practise and application of these three divine virtues we attain to
Christian perfection. The more we learn to know these virtues, the more
zealous we shall be in practising them, the more earnestly we shall
strive for their increase, the more incessantly shall we pray for them.

Let us, therefore, take these three divine virtues for the subject of
our consideration.

I. Faith is the first of the three divine virtues; it is the foundation
of the other virtues. Without faith in God, in His revelations and
promises, there can be no Christian hope, no Christian charity. For
this reason faith is the foundation of virtuous living: Christian faith
is a virtue infused by God into our souls by which we are enabled to
believe firmly all that which God has revealed and which the infallible
Catholic Church proposes for our belief.

An act of faith requires the use of the understanding and the use of
the will. The mysteries surpass our natural understanding; they are,
furthermore, to be believed in a supernatural manner, and we require,
therefore, the supernatural light of faith, added to the natural light
of our understanding, and we require also that our natural willpower be
strengthened by the supernatural power of grace. This light and this
power we receive in Baptism. The supernatural light of faith qualifies
us to understand that the truths revealed by God are divine.

In order to believe it does not suffice to know the divine truths as
the Church teaches them, we must also, of our own free will, assent to
them, and acknowledge as divine truths even those mysteries which
surpass our human understanding. To that extent faith is a matter of
the will. God, through the light and the power of the grace of