When people think of the Catholic faith, or the Catholic Church, some combination of her beliefs, her history, her architecture, her art, her charity, her saints or sinners, often come to mind.

However, the Church’s deepest identity is to be found in her founder, Jesus Christ, and her faithfulness to Him.

The Church, or the Body of Christ, is the communion of those whom God is saving: through Christ’s life, death on the cross and resurrection from the dead, He calls mankind to repentance and to enter into eternal (or Divine) life, purely out of love for them.

Faith is the gift that God gives to those who trust Him and welcome His Grace, particularly through the sacrament of Baptism.

The Holy Spirit comes to dwell in every Christian, making them an adopted child of God, and in order to produce those good fruits which manifest His love and the signs of His Kingdom in the world.

There is no-one from whom this invitation is withheld: “the invisible God, from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends, and moves among them, in order to invite and receive them into his own company”.

Our Faith, therefore, is a response to this great love of God which unites us to Christ, under the Pope and the Bishops whom He appointed to lead the Church, and which compels us to live out our unique vocation, or calling.