Lent 2026 - Reading #35 - Faith
Reading
Thomas Aquinas teaches that faith is not merely the beginning of the spiritual life but its foundation throughout: "Faith is the first of the virtues, inasmuch as the knowledge of the end precedes the movement of the will towards it. For the will cannot tend to God by hope and love unless the intellect has first apprehended Him by faith. Hence faith precedes hope and charity in the order of nature, though not in the order of dignity." Aquinas also addresses the relationship between faith and action: "Living faith is faith informed by charity, for faith by itself is dead, as the Apostle James teaches. But even dead faith, faith without charity, is still true faith, for its formal object is still the First Truth. It is not false, but incomplete. The person who believes but does not love has real faith but faith that has not yet reached its proper perfection." For Aquinas, faith is thus both foundational and dynamic, it is the first step toward God, but it reaches its perfection only when it flowers into hope and, ultimately, into love. Faith without charity is real but stunted; faith with charity transforms the whole person. The Lenten journey from faith through hope to charity mirrors this Thomistic progression.
Reflection
We close our week on faith, the thirty-seventh day of Lent, and Aquinas himself provides the bridge to what comes next. Faith is first, he says, but not greatest. It is the foundation, but the building that rises from it is hope and, finally, love. Our journey through the seven virtues now enters its final chapters: two weeks remain, devoted to hope and then, during Holy Week, to love itself. Look how far we have come. We began in ashes, with the bare honesty of prudence. We built outward through justice and steeled ourselves through fortitude. We learned the freedom of temperance and opened ourselves to the gift of faith. The architecture of virtue is now nearly complete, and each piece supports the others. Without prudence, our faith would be superstition. Without justice, our faith would be hypocrisy. Without fortitude, our faith would collapse at the first trial. Without temperance, our faith would be swallowed by distraction. But faith, even with all these supports, is incomplete without hope. Aquinas says that faith gives us knowledge of God, but hope gives us the confident expectation that this God is working all things for our good, that the story has a shape, that the darkness is not the last word, that what we believe is not just true but will prevail. Tomorrow, we begin to look forward. The end of Lent is in sight. Easter draws near. And the virtue we need most in these final stretches, the virtue that keeps us moving when the road is longest, is hope.