One recent night, I was gathered with all my kids, who are 10 to 19 years old. Looking at Veronica but directing my comment to all of them, I said, “You are a soul with a body. Your mom and I formed your body through conception. God formed your soul. At the moment of your conception, he said, “Veronica,” and your soul was created from nothing and united with your body.”

On a different night, I told them that angels watch over and defend them (Roman Missal, Votive Mass of The Holy Angels, Collect).

At some other time, I told them to never stray away from the sacraments because Christ will continue to give them his divine life through the sacraments, just like he gave his divine life during his earthly ministry. The fresco below depicts the encounter of Jesus with the woman with the hemorrhage (Mk 5:25–34), and it makes my point but is better than my words.

For years, my children have found comfort and reassurance in these statements, and many like them. They are not opinions (I don’t think my children receive them as such). I know they are facts because God has revealed them, and I trust that his words and deeds are true.

We use two different powers to know things. The power of reason proves and disproves things. The power of faith believes all that God has revealed and that which the Church proposes as being divinely revealed. Both powers give us knowledge: knowledge-by-reason or knowledge-by-faith that reason cannot prove or disprove but can understand.

Divine Revelation is knowledge-by-faith. God revealed himself in stages, in his covenants with man. During the first stage, he revealed himself to our first parents and formed a covenant with them. Then he revealed himself to Noah and formed a covenant with him and all living beings that remains in force until the end of time. During the third stage, he chose Abraham and made a covenant with him and his descendants. Finally, he revealed himself fully in Jesus Christ. Jesus is God’s only and complete Word, so there will be no further revelation after him.

“In giving us his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word—and he has no more to say … because what he spoke before to the prophets in parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us the All Who is His Son. Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of offending him, by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty” (St. John of the Cross).