We can't lose our faith the way we lose our car keys. We either give it away or we let it decay

because we don't use it. Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz. And in my new book, Unshakeable,

building a life of virtue in a world of chaos, I tell faith-filled stories that inspire you

to live a life of virtue that flows from the unshakable power of God.

Although we're surrounded by a culture that mocks virtue, we can feed ourselves stories

that really do uphold what is good and promote a virtuous life.

When we live this way, we experience freedom and joy like never before.

It's my prayer that the stories in my book, Unshakeable, will inspire you

to fight the battle for a virtuous life and win through trust in an unshakable God. Order your

copy at ascensionpress.com.

Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith.

The Catechism in a year is brought to you by ascension.

In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity and God's families. We journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 267. We're reading paragraphs 2030 to 2036. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes a foundation of faith approach, but you could follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own catechism in a year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash CIY. And lastly,

you can. You can. You can't. You can't click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily

updates. Daily notifications. It is day 267.

As I said yesterday, we finished Article 2 on grace and merit and freedom, and it's awesome.

Today, I mentioned this yesterday, today we're talking about the church, our mother and teacher.

And for the next couple days, we're going to be talking about this until we launch into the Ten Commandments and really diving deeply into the moral life. And one of the reasons why the church is setting this out for us is because if the church is our mother, then she loves us. And if the church is our teacher, then we need to listen to her. And that's, and that's, that can be the challenge for so many of us. We talked about this a little bit before, but sometimes when people read the Bible, it can be far enough ago, like long enough in the past that people are not threatened by the Bible. Sometimes. Sometimes people are, which is good, because the Word of God is meant to convict our hearts and meant to console our hearts. It's meant to be very, very present. But sometimes we can hold it at an arm's length and say, well, that was then.

And maybe God's word is convicting me, but, you know, I'm not going to apply it to my life right now. And then all of a sudden, here is Jesus 2,000 years ago, who gives us a church. And even before that, you know, when God raised up the people of Israel, that was the community. That wasn't, it wasn't like people read the Bible in isolation.

They would read the Bible

in isolation. They would read the Bible with and through the community. And just like as Christians

for 2,000 years, we read the Bible with and through the church, the lens of the interpretation

...