The Faith is not acquired once and for all, and it is not exhausted by the small amount we know of its content. It demands of us a continuous awareness of spirit, an unfailing interior profession of our belief, attention to its gradual acquisition. And each one of us, with the help of good books or good masters, with patient reflection ready to gather what signs the Holy Spirit gives and with prayer asking for enlightenment, each one of us must strive on his own account to take stock of the great and persistent difficulties which he will meet with along the path, often arduous, often mysterious, of Faith. To the modern scientific mind Faith seems to be lacking entirely that strictness of thought which belongs to the exact sciences. The very nature of the knowledge it offers, founded on witness, seems to upset and to atrophy the autonomy of the intellect, confident as it is that it can discover for itself and check for itself the truth it possesses.
Modern man is all eager for action, practical action, doing something.
An entirely empiric and unjust objection this, but how strong it is, seeing that it draws so many away from religious ideas and practice, those people who maintain that they have neither the mentality not the time at their disposal to take account of the worth and therefore of the demands which the Word of God, resounding throughout history and resounding here and now in the world of conscience and of actual happenings, causes to arise in regard to man and his responsibilities. There is yet another category of objections which have found lively expression in contemporary writings, objections which reject Faith precisely because of certain advantages which it brings to souls. And so it goes on. But We feel sure, dearest children, that as a result of your own experience and reflection you will have found the answers to the objections which We have alluded to and to such other similar ones as You have met with along the intellectual and spiritual path. Objections of this sort usually err by their simplicity.