utionary, constantly bringing to our knowledge unsuspected riches
stored in the very principles whose meaning we had assumed that we had
exhausted.

Perhaps one of the treasures of our religion of which we have not
achieved full consciousness is God's choice of us to be the guardians of
His revelation. It is our charge "to keep the faith." I suppose that
this responsibility is commonly regarded as belonging to some vaguely
imagined Church which hands it on from generation to generation, to us
among others, but without imposing on us an obligation of any active
sort. But we are the Church--members in particular of the Body of
Christ. And in the dissemination of the faith the last appeal is to us,
not to some outside tribunal. When the Church wishes to discover its
faith and make it articulate, its place of search is in the minds and
hearts of the faithful. Our responsibility is to testify to the Catholic
Faith, not so much by positively asserting it as by making it active and
vivid in our lives so that its presence and power can by no means be
mistaken. You, for instance, in common with the rest of the faithful,
are the custodians of this truth of the perpetual virginity of the
Blessed Virgin Mary. It may seem a small matter, but it is not. That it
is not is readily seen from this fact, that when the perpetual virginity
of our Blessed Mother is denied then also the Incarnation of her Son is
denied or is held only in a half-hearted way. The Church stresses such
facts, not only because they are facts, but because by their character
they form a hedge about the truth of the Incarnation of our Lord. And we
who are Catholic Christians must feel an obligation to hold fast this
fact. We ought actively to show our firm adherence to it. How? Chiefly
by our attitude towards Blessed Mary herself, by the devotion that we
show her. If we are quite indifferent to devotion to Blessed Mary, if we
show her no honour, if we likewise fail in honour to her guardian, S.
Joseph, is it not to be expected that our grasp upon the truths which
are enshrined in such devotion will be feeble, and that we shall hold
them as of small moment? The whole system of Catholic thought is so
nicely articulated, so consistently held together, that failure to hold
even the smallest constituent indicates a faulty conception of the
whole. Catholics are constantly accused of over-stressing devotion to
blessed Mary and the saints and thereby encroaching upon the hono