Hebrews 11:1-2
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old received divine approval.
We live in a skeptical age. We also live in an incredibly credulous age. That’s not surprising, for people tend to see-saw between extremes. Those who refuse to believe in God don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything. And so the same people who laugh at faith in God are often the ones who believe in crystals, past life regression, or spoon bending. And the hard-boiled skeptics who laugh at this and urge us to put our faith in Science are often the ones who find preposterous the idea that God made loaves and fishes from nothing 2000 years ago, yet have no difficulty believing Nothing made the entire universe 12 billion years ago. They insist that the Faith is irrational and Reason is superior yet indulge their own irrationalities in the next breath. In contrast, Catholic faith teaches us that Faith is superior to mere knowledge because Faith is the way we know persons and knowledge is merely the way we know things. I can weigh, measure, and take the temperature of my wife all day long without getting to know her. To know her, I must love her and to love her I must trust her and have faith in her. It’s the same with God. We love God, not because we are too childish to think, but because the best human thought by the greatest minds in the world is not sufficient to grasp him. Only faith can do that. The heart has reasons that reason knows nothing of.