2. "I LIVE BY FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST"

Faith is a new creation, by which God gives himself to us and shares his life with us.  Faith is life, not philosophy.  It is truth, perfection, the good.  To the gift of God, human beings respond with the gift of self, a gift that consecrates them to God, makes them "holy."  The life of the just man is to believe in Christ, source of all virtues.  Faith is grace that "divinizes" human beings, that motivates the asceticism that raises daily existence to union with Christ.

Faith is nourished by prayer, which is "God infused into our hearts." The person who prays is the voice of the universe.  Prayer is what unites human beings. Prayer is communion with the prayer of Christ and of the Church.  Prayer is God's omnipotence placed at our disposal.  He who does not pray does not live.

Faith perceives and interprets history as salvation history.  God saves people through their history.  His plans, albeit mysterious, are infallible.  There is no question that human society is evolving, even through sufferings and cataclysms, toward the kingdom of God.  The events of history and social transformations are preparing the coming of a humanity united in one sheepfold and under one shepherd, thus reconstituting all peoples into one family under one Father, through Christ and the Church.

Real progress is Jesus Christ.  Faith and reason, religion and science, theology and philosophy, everything comes from God and belongs to God, the one and only Truth.