This essay is a Cover Story selection, a weekly feature highlighting the top picks from the editors of America Media. So the main question is not about some issue about Catholicism, but the whole idea. So for this essay I spoke with friends who work with young people, and young people themselves, to get the hardest questions. Here they are. The other day I was on vacation with some Jesuit friends and I was walking on the beach. There I was, in a beautiful setting and feeling really happy.
Suddenly I started to wonder: Is that all there is? From time to time, we all feel a persistent longing, a need for something more. I spoke with friends who work with young people, and young people themselves, to get the hardest questions. That longing is something that even your disbelieving, agnostic or atheist friends may admit to feeling.
The best answer is from St. And this, crucially, is also one way that God calls us. How else would God call to us other than to place that longing within us? Of course there is no completely satisfactory answer, no airtight proof for the existence of God. Saints, theologians and other thinkers have wrestled with this question for years. If there were an airtight proof, everyone would believe. If a person is open to philosophizing or theologizing, I often pose the question that stopped me in my tracks during my philosophy studies: Why is there something rather than nothing at all?
That usually makes people think. Even if you believe in the Big Bang,, when unimaginably dense matter exploded into the universe, you have to ask: Where did that unimaginably dense matter come from? The human mind, which naturally understands cause and effect, is often teased into active thought by that question. Then I might try some St. Just so, if you look at the complexity of the universe, you assume a maker. Now you could say that the world and the universe are all the result of random probabilities, but if you see a seagull soaring over the ocean, as I did the other day, to me, it points to some sort of creative intent.
So I try to start somewhere else: their experience. Something that surprised them with a deep emotion or wonder or awe. And most people, if the question is asked in an inviting way, say yes.
