Faith, Hope, Love

Faith 

Our moral life has its source in faith in God who reveals his love to us. 

Obedience of faith is our first obligation. 

Ignorance of God is the principle and explanation of all moral deviations.

Our duty toward God is to believe in him and to bear witness to him.

The first commandment requires us to nourish and protect our faith with prudence and vigilance, and to reject everything that is opposed to it. 

There are various ways of sinning against faith: 

Voluntary doubt about the faith disregards or refuses to hold as true what God has revealed and the Church proposes for belief. 

Involuntary doubtrefers to hesitation in believing, difficulty in overcoming objections connected with the faith, or also anxiety aroused by its obscurity. If deliberately cultivated doubt can lead to spiritual blindness.

Incredulity is the neglect of revealed truth or the willful refusal to assent to it. 

Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same; 

apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith; 

schism is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him

Hope 

When God reveals Himself and calls him, man cannot fully respond to the divine love by his own powers. 

He must hope that God will give him the capacity to love Him in return and to act in conformity with the commandments of charity. 

Hope is the confident expectation of divine blessing and the beatific vision of God; it is also the fear of offending God's love and of incurring punishment.

The first commandment is also concerned with sins against hope, namely, despair and presumption: 

By despair, man ceases to hope for his personal salvation from God, for help in attaining it or for the forgiveness of his sins. Despair is contrary to God's goodness, to his justice — for the Lord is faithful to his promises — and to his mercy.

There are two kinds of presumption. Either man presumes upon his own capacities, (hoping to be able to save himself without help from on high), or he presumes upon God's almighty power or his mercy (hoping to obtain his forgiveness without conversion and glory without merit).

Charity 

Faith in God's love encompasses the call and the obligation to respond with sincere love to divine charity. 

The first commandment enjoins us to love God above everything and all creatures for him and because of him.