1. Jesus Lives. (the ongoing testimony of His life, death, resurrection, teachings, prophesies [The Davidic kingship, the Temple, the Sabbath all fulfilled and transformed in Christ] and miracles; including and perhaps most especially all of the minute personal details of his personal relationship with me, accompanying me in this earthly pilgrimage with constant unfailing care and guidance).
2. The Seven Sacraments. Wherein God the Father claims you as His own in His only Son!
3. The Hierarchical Church (The Papacy and the Apostolic Succession and the ministerial priesthood): the New Covenant (Hahn).
4. The Saints and their shining participation in the testimony of Christ and communion in Him with all believers, especially The Most Blessed and Ever Virgin Mary and the Holy Angels.
5. Sacred Scripture and the perfect fulfillment of it all in Christ and the Gospel; and in His Church, the Church, with Her Sacraments and in Her Saints.
6. The Old Covenant (the concurring and constant ongoing testimony of the non-Christian monotheists: Israel and Islam including the decalogue, especially the first commandment to love, adore and believe in and serve the one true God) especially the Messianic (i.e. preparation for Christ) meaning thereof.
7. Family and the infinite mercy involved in my existence therein.
8. Nature and all her wonders (including her marvelous and superlative order, beauty, origin and purpose).
9. Human Intelligence (philosophy and every form of science: the wonder and limits thereof).
10. Protestantism and the Catholic logic therein.
11. Conscience and the innate inner moral sense (albeit needing formation) with every external manifestation thereof including the order of law. The reality of sin and crime.
12. Mercy. The primacy and absolute need of the infinite mercy of God as the check and limit on every form of violation of persons, injustice and evil. N.B. Luke 6: 27-38; the evangelical counsels and the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
13. Atheism. The simplicity and smallness of the false gods of the atheist: viz. the patent illusion of human self-sufficiency, egoism, pleasure seeking, worldly intelligence, fame and success.
14. The Occult. The testimony of superstition and the occult (showing the elemental instinctual human yearning for and contact with the supernatural, even in the dark corruptions thereof: viz. every man yearns for the living God; if He does not serve Him in light he pursues Him in darkness and even in rejection and hatred as an enemy of God).
15. The Holy Spirit. All of the above is the evidence of the unfailing working of throughout the entire universe, visible and invisible, and in my own life and in yours.
It was a thirteen year old Mexican American boy who inspired the question for this post. He is a boy whom I have know all his life; being very close to his family even before the marriage of his parents, preparing them for marriage and assisting in the sacramental life of that noble but poor Catholic family of five children my entire priestly life these past sixteen years. His father told me to counsel the boy because he says he does not believe in God.
Every believer should have very clear and articulate reasons why he believes in God, and why everyone should believe in Him!
Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. There of course may be difficulties in the evidence; but I am speaking of difficulties intrinsic to the doctrines themselves, or to their relations with each other. A man may be annoyed that he cannot work out a mathematical problem, of which the answer is or is not given to him, without doubting that it admits of an answer, or that a certain particular answer is the true one. Of all points of faith, the being of a God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed with most difficulty, and yet borne in upon our minds with most power. Newman
N.B. Spe Salvi
