Are we to look to Jesus Christ our Lord as our ideal in faith as in all other virtues? No, we cannot do so. Faith is the virtue in which He does not set us an example. He always possessed the Beatific Vision, by reason of the Hypostatic Union, and its perfect brightness is incompatible with the obscurity of faith. Even when the Divinity was veiled in the Sacred Humanity it was impossible for Him to see "through a glass, in a dark manner." He saw everything distinctly, as it really is. So in Heaven there will be no faith, because we shall always see God.
Where then are we to look for our model of faith? 'In the most perfect of creatures, the Holy Mother of God. In her conduct at the Annunciation we have a model of ready acceptance on Divine authority of what was naturally impossible. In spite of her virginity, in spite of her vow of chastity, she doubted not God's promise that she should be the Mother of the Son of God. What is impossible to men, she knew to be possible to God.
Yet she showed that prudence that is a part of faith. Faith does not mean that we are to gulp down everything which is impossible to nature unchallenged. Faith is always discreet, and makes sure of the promise being from God. Until Mary understood that God would intervene, and that she would remain ever a virgin, she was slow to believe that God had sent the message. But when once she had a sufficient motive for belief, she accepted with firmest confidence what was impossible to man. Is my faith like hers? Do I accept all that God has revealed with undoubting confidence as soon as I know that it is He Who speaks?
- text from Beautiful Pearls of Catholic Truth; it has the Imprimatur of Archbishop Michael Augustine Corrigan, Diocese of New York, 6 October 1897