Jan 19 Fri
Catholic doctrine is not a construct of the human intelligence: we have received it from the Church, which faithfully transmits the truths that Jesus Christ gave to the Apostles. Therefore, if we want to be faithful to our Lord, we have to conserve her teachings, try to know them better, to live them, and transmit them integrally to the rest of mankind.
“Guard the deposit which I have given to you," wrote St Paul to Timothy. And St Vincent of Lerins comments: “What is the deposit? It is what you have believed and not what you have discovered; what you have received and not what you have thought up; something which comes not from personal cunning, but from doctrine; not the fruits of theft, but fruit of public tradition. It is something that has come down to you, which has not been invented by you; something of which you are not the author, but the guardian; not the creator but the curator; not the conductor but the conducted one."
“Guard the deposit: conserve clean and inviolate the talent, the gift of the Catholic faith. May what you have believed remain in you, and give the same to the others. You have received gold, give back gold; don't substitute one thing for another, don't replace the gold with lead, don't mix it fraudulently with anything. Be not interested in something with the appearance of gold but in the pure gold itself."
“What belongs to the deposit of Revelation," St. Josemaría wrote, “that which –trusting in God, who cannot deceive nor be deceived– we know to be Catholic truth, cannot be an object of compromises, simply because it is the truth, and the truth does not come by halves."
“Have you ever thought about what would happen if, on the basis of wanting to be 'transigent', all the changes, that we men might ask for, were made to our holy Catholic faith? Perhaps we would arrive at something in which we were all in agreement, at a type of religion which was characterized by a vague inclination of the heart, by a sterile sentimentalism, that almost certainly –with a little bit of good will– could be found in any search for the supernatural; but this doctrine would not be the doctrine of Christ, it would not be a treasure of divine truths, but something human, that would neither save nor redeem; salt which had become insipid."
This holy intransigence in what belongs to the deposit of the faith, ought to be always accompanied by transigence, which is equally holy, with people who do not possess the plenitude of the Catholic truth. But we cannot make compromises in the faith."
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