What Israel’s story makes painfully obvious is that following the Lord is a lifelong lesson in “I believe, but help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
Faith holds on to the truth of who Jesus is revealed to be, despite our sometimes incongruent experience with God.
This is an excerpt from the first chapter of A Reasoned Defense of the Faith by Adam Francisco (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 1-3.

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Pride builds identities that leave no room for grace.
The Church’s unity is not uniformity in every matter of her well-being. It is faithfulness in what constitutes her being.
A rightly-oriented heart and a rightly-oriented love will consistently do what is best for God and best for our neighbor, which is why St. Augustine speaks of sin as a disordered love.
The Scriptures consistently speak about sanctification as a sure gift for the Christian.
We can lay down our sledgehammers of moralistic performance, which aren’t effective anyway, and we can trust that we are his and his life is ours.
He doesn’t consume us, even though that is what we deserve. Instead, Jesus comes down to us and consumes all our sin by taking it on himself.
The Antichrist offers another continual presence. It is every whisper that tempts us toward autonomy, that tells us to carry it alone, that insists suffering is meaningless.
Instead of offering more details or more information, he does something even better: he promises his very presence.
The Church speaks not with the cleverness of men, but with the breath of God.
The doctrine of the Trinity is not so much the story of a “who-dunnit” as it is the story of the “who-is-it.”
You are a soul. Not an algorithm. Not a hashtag. A soul knit together by a God who does not mock, does not abandon, and does not lie.
Every time someone is baptized, every time bread is broken and wine poured, every time a sinner hears, “Your sins are forgiven in Christ,” Pentecost happens again.