Father Luigi Giussani wrote the book titled The Religious Sense, in which he defined the term that is the title: “The religious sense is reason as awareness of reality as a whole.”

“Reason as…” There are several ways to finish that sentence. How does the Church finish it? What does she say reason is?

She teaches ‘reason as….’

• The capacity to understand the order of things.
• That which judges acts as good or bad.
• That which gives ordinances for the sake of the common good.
• That which recognizes the voice of God.

Fr. Giussani’s “Reason as awareness”–specifically, awareness of reality–seems to be another way of talking about reason as an ‘understanding of the order of things.’ Fr. Giussani proposed that awe, signs, and freedom are the means that awaken this type of reason, which he also called the religious sense.

We perfect reason by making God its object. “God willed that man should be ‘left in the hand of his own counsel,’ so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him. (Gaudium et spes, 17)”

Man is created in the image and likeness of God and called to share eternal life with God. The manifestation of the divine image and likeness is our communion of persons with immortal souls, reason, free will, and law, freely seeking truth, beauty, and goodness. The soul is immortal, so we are to be eternally in communion with others, reason, have free will, live according to the eternal law, and always seek truth, beauty, and goodness. What can fulfill this in us eternally? There is only one answer, being in communion with God. Then, we will be in eternal communion with the eternally living God, reason will know all things, moral life will blossom into eternal life that accords with the eternal law, and freedom will always find the source of the truth, beauty, and goodness it seeks.