But natural reason leads me only so far, only to God as the principle and meaning of all things, to whom I owe adoration and obedience. It leads me to a natural worship of the Most High, but it does not lead me to a supernatural commerce of life and love with this God, nor can it tell me whether such a living intercourse is possible. It is true that creation gives testimony to God’s omnipotence, wisdom and goodness; but it does so only so far as these attributes are mirrored in natural things. It does not give testimony to the fullness of His creative love, it does not let us see into the heart of God. Is God only the Creator and Supporter of my being? Or is He more than that, and would He be more than that? The inner world of the Triune God, who “dwelleth in light inaccessible” (1 Tim. vi, 16), remains for us the “mystery kept secret from eternity” (Rom. xvi, 25), unless He reveals Himself to us by His living word, in an act of the most generous personal giving and by a manifestation that passes beyond the dead witness of nature. Thus the inner God, the whole God, the “mystery which had been hidden from ages and generations” (Col. i, 26) is revealed to us men only by the supernatural way, only by the fact that He Himself speaks to us. Such is the Christian’s glad tidings: “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all in these days hath spoken to us by His Son” (Hebr. i, 1-2).

In Christ the condescension of God to our humanity became a permanent and blessed reality. “And the Word was made flesh.” This faith in Jesus, in the “Deus Incarnatus,” is the second pillar which supports the edifice of the Catholic faith.

But how comes the Catholic to this faith in Jesus, in the Son of God? When we answer this question there emerges to view a characteristic element of the Catholic mind, the overwhelming importance of the Church in the production of the certitude of faith. The Catholic does not come to Christ by literary channels, as by the Scriptural records, but through his sacramental and personal incorporation in the living Church. How is this to be understood?