I used to think that faith was what people believed (or didn’t believe) about God the creator, or that faith was a particular system of religious belief (e.g. the Christian Faith). Some people even use the meaning of trust or confidence: “I don’t have any faith that my team can win this weekend.” But those are the meanings that people use in conversational English. I first learned in Cursillo and later my Discipleship Quad that there is more to faith than what I had previously thought. Faith is a gift from God. The Catechism describes faith as follows: “Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him (CCC 153).” Additionally, “Believing is possible only by grace and the interior helps of the Holy Spirit. But it is no less true that believing is an authentically human act (CCC 154).”
Bob Rice (2021, p. 7) writes that the more we study the faith, the more God gives the gift of faith to us so that we understand what He has revealed. Both our minds and our hearts are being converted. He explains that “the gift of faith provides the ‘evidence of things not seen’ (Hebrews 11:1), an ability to continue to have faith even in the face of confusion or difficulty” (p. 8). So, we surrender to our faith, rather than approving or disapproving elements of our faith line by line as if we are equals with God. I suppose that this refers to what we have come to call “cafeteria Catholics.” Those are the Catholics that treat Catholicism as a buffet, choosing only those elements of our faith that they are most comfortable with. We should remember that as a follower of Christ, we don’t have the option to disregard anything He says (Catholic 365).
We should strive to be like St. Peter who proclaimed that Jesus is “the Holy One of God” (John 6:69) after many of the disciples returned to their former way of life. They could not grasp Jesus’ “hard sayings” about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. We must instead use our faith to seek understanding, as the Holy Spirit perfects our faith by His gifts so that more of God’s revelation may be understood. “In the words of St. Augustine, ‘I believe in order to understand; and I understand, the better to believe.’ (CCC 158).”
Catholic Church. (1997). Catechism of the Catholic Church: Modifications from the Editio Typica (2nd ed.). Doubleday.
Catholic 365. Cafeteria Catholics. Retrieved October 8, 2026, from https://www.catholic365.com/article/41630/cafeteria-catholics.html
Rice, B. (2021). Discipleship Quad Guidebook, Part 3. Franciscan University of Steubenville.
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