Let us then recite this beautiful and excellent prayer most diligently and piously, and let us give special preference to the devotion of the Rosary which is a garland woven to blessed Mary from this prayer of praise.  The quarter of an hour spent in reciting the beads will bring us blessings in life and a happy death.  How we shall rejoice when we behold Mary face to face and greet her with the words:  Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus, to whom be praise for all eternity.  Amen.

IX.  THE PRAYER TO INCREASE THE THREE DIVINE VIRTUES

“And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three:  but the greatest of these is charity.”—­I.  Cor. xiii, 13.

Dear brethren, in beginning the Rosary one Our Father and three Hail Marys are said in supplication for the three divine virtues.  These virtues are called divine because they have God for their Author or their object.  In Baptism these virtues are infused into the soul together with sanctifying grace.  Through sanctifying grace, received in Baptism, we are made children of God.  From that moment there is imposed upon us the duty, as soon as we shall be able to use our reason, of thinking, speaking and acting as behooves the true children of God.  This duty we perform if we imitate the example of Jesus Christ, and if we endeavor to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.  But as this cannot be done by human power, the Holy Ghost has willed to enable us to do so, by imparting to us, in Baptism, the three divine virtues.  By the infused grace of faith God gives us a supernatural light, in addition to the natural light of our reason, with the aid of which we may comprehend His revelations.  God bestows upon us thus, through the virtue of faith, a share in His own wisdom.  The supernatural grace of hope turns our thought heavenward, gives us an incentive to co-operate with grace.

The supernatural virtue of charity renders us capable of loving God in a worthy and meritorious manner and of loving that which God loves.

As the child arrives at the age of discretion, and obtains the right use of reason, he is obliged to practise these virtues, and thus I strengthen his soul and grow in grace.

We are obliged to awaken frequently faith, hope, and charity towards God and our neighbor, in a practical manner.  By the possession, practise and application of these three divine virtues we attain to Christian perfection.  The more we learn to know these virtues, the more zealous we shall be in practising them, the more earnestly we shall strive for their increase, the more incessantly shall we pray for them.

Let us, therefore, take these three divine virtues for the subject of our consideration.

I. Faith is the first of the three divine virtues; it is the foundation of the other virtues.  Without faith in God, in His revelations and promises, there can be no Christian hope, no Christian charity.  For this reason faith is the foundation of virtuous living:  Christian faith is a virtue infused by God into our souls by which we are enabled to believe firmly all that which God has revealed and which the infallible Catholic Church proposes for our belief.