We can reason that God exists by observing the world and human beings. We live in Creation and constantly gaze upon it. We are always looking at the world and at each other. We are constantly reminded that there is a beginning for every plant, animal, and human being.

The way that school children are taught the number line, which begins at zero and moves from that point, expresses a fundamental and universal understanding of existence. We don’t know anything in the universe that had no beginning, that is, and always was.

It is shocking and stunning that there is an exception to that understanding. Reason tells us there is that from which all of it comes, that which has no beginning, and that which must exist outside of time itself! We call that recognition, knowing God.

Happiness

All of us experience desire and seek the fulfillment of our desire. But some desire always remains in us, even as we fulfill it. We all have an absence of the complete satisfaction of desire because we desire, but don’t possess, the one who called us into existence. Our earthly pilgrimage, therefore, is also our yearning for the final fulfillment of all desire. God is the name of that yearning. He is the fulfillment of all desires.

You are great, O Lord, and greatly to be praised: great is your power and your wisdom is without measure. And man, so small a part of your creation, wants to praise you: this man, though clothed with mortality and bearing the evidence of sin and the proof that you withstand the proud. Despite everything, man, though but a small part of your creation, wants to praise you. You yourself encourage him to delight in your praise, for you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

Catechism, 30

Consider the famous question that Augustine poses at the end of this passage:

Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky … question all these realities. All respond: “See, we are beautiful.” Their beauty is a profession [confessio]. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One [Pulcher] who is not subject to change.

All must answer, whether it be God or any other name.