"Jesus Christ makes this condition: that we live by faith, because then we will be able to remove the mountains. And there are so many things to remove... in the world and, first of all, in our hearts. So many obstacles to grace! Faith, then; faith with works, faith with sacrifice, faith with humility. For faith makes us all-powerful creatures: and whatsoever ye ask in prayer, as ye have faith, ye shall obtain (Mt 21:22) ".
Faith is to be put into practice in daily life. You must be not only hearers of the word, but men who put it into practice: estote factores verbi et non auditores tantum. The Apostle James exhorts us: "Do, put into practice in your life the word of God and do not limit yourselves to listening to it. It is not enough to assent to doctrine, but it is necessary to live these truths, to practice them, to put them into practice. Faith must generate a life of faith, which is a manifestation of friendship with Jesus Christ. We must go to God with our life, with our works, with our sorrows and our joys... with everything! with everything!.
Difficulties often arise or become greater because of a lack of faith: excessive appreciation of the circumstances of the environment in which we move or giving too much importance to considerations of human prudence, which can come from a lack of rectitude of intention. "There is nothing, however easy it may be, that our lukewarmness does not make difficult and burdensome; just as there is nothing so difficult and painful that our fervor and determination do not make it easy and bearable for us".
The life of faith produces a healthy "superiority complex," which is born of a profound personal humility; for "faith is not proper to the proud but to the humble," recalls St. Augustine: it responds to the deep conviction of knowing that efficacy comes from God and not from oneself. This confidence leads the Christian to face the obstacles he encounters in his soul and in the apostolate with the morality of victory, even if at times the fruits are slow in coming. With prayer and mortification, with friendly treatment, with our habitual joy, we will be able to perform those great miracles in souls. We will be able to "move mountains", to remove barriers that seemed insurmountable, to bring our friends closer to Confession, to put people on the road to the Lord who were going in the opposite direction. That faith capable of moving mountains is nourished in intimate contact with Jesus in prayer and in the sacraments.
Our Blessed Mother Mary will teach us to be filled with faith, love and audacity in the face of the task that God has set for us in the midst of the world, for she is "the good instrument who identifies herself completely with the mission she has received. Once God's plans are known, Holy Mary makes them her own; they are not something foreign to her. She commits her entire understanding, her will and her energies to the complete fulfillment of these plans. At no time does the Blessed Virgin appear to us as a kind of inert puppet: not when she embarks, vivacious, on the journey to the mountains of Judea to visit Elizabeth; nor when, truly exercising her role as Mother, she seeks and finds the Infant Jesus in the temple of Jerusalem; nor when she provokes the Lord's first miracle; nor when she appears - without needing to be summoned - at the foot of the Cross on which her Son dies.... It is she who freely, as when she says, "Let it be done," puts her entire personality at stake for the fulfillment of the task she has received: a task that is in no way foreign to her: God's are the personal interests of Holy Mary. It is not only that no private aim of hers hindered the Lord's plans: it is that, moreover, her own aims were exactly these plans".