The existence of God is witnessed by human reason and the heart and the revelations of God.

When I walk around a foreign world or travel to a city, I will be the first to visit the church there. I don’t know a more glorious feeling than when a person is in a magnificent temple admiring the work of the human mind before God is churning. Every altar of the temple, every pillar of it, all its decoration calls me: sursum corda,—up hearts! Aware of my nothingness, I fell before Almighty God; to worship him, they set up the magnificent temple.

Lie this almighty God has an even stranger, more glorious, more dignified temple than all the churches of the whole world are together; its foundation is the earth, the pillars are the mountains, the vault is the blue sky of heaven, its decoration is the stars in the sky, the organ thunder: such a beautiful, glorious temple of the Lord God is this created great world. What even faith would not command me and what my heart would not inspire me, but the sight of this created great world tells me that there is one master, one creator, above us, whom we are not even able to name in our fragility, only in our most profound obeisance will we dare to proclaim his holy name: God. Even the wise men of the most significant reason could not understand the essence of the Lord God, and even the heavenly seraphim could not explain that: well, I dust and ashes, as I could explain it to you so that you can understand the highest, invisible spiritual being?

So, when God is an invisible, incomprehensible spirit, could you ask me how I learned to know this Lord God so much that I can preach about him without ceasing? This created world teaches me to know God; a living conscience in my heart evidences his existence; and his most holy Son told us his perfection. Reason, heart, and the word of God are the teachers of my faith.

1. This world is like one big open book, completely described by God’s finger. The sun, the moon, and the stars are letters that announce aloud: God created heaven and earth, and he made us, too. The view of this world teaches me that it is God, as from the steps in the sand, I know that either man or animal walked on it.

A few years ago, a particular scholar traveled to Asia. In the sandy desert of Arabia, he met an Arab boy kneeling to pray. The scholar asked the boy what he was doing. The young Arab rebuked him: I pray! The scholar began questioning him further: And to whom are you praying? – To the one to whom you are praying, to God. How do you know that he is God and that you should pray to him? The Arab’s blood had already boiled over this; he jumped out of the ground and fell on the stupid curious: „And you are who, you beast, you had to come here from among some wild animals, that you dare ask me such a question. How do I know he is God? Look at these steps in the sand; don’t you know from them that a whole caravan of camels passed through here? And look at the sky, look at the nature around you, see if you see that God walked here. And you, the creature of this God, you still dare to ask whether he is God, whether we should pray to God?“

This unlearned pagan will shame many arrogant scholars who do not want to acknowledge God. A simple little schoolboy surpasses many famous sages who say everything just happened to be formed by itself.

I will tell them a parable. Hey, a hen lays the egg, and a chick hatches from the egg. Let’s say that everything in nature is created by itself; let those scholars tell me what happened first: a hen or an egg. And they answered me: first, she had to be a hen. So, the first hen didn’t hatch from the egg, so where did it come from? I will answer you, my dear gentlemen, so you do not worry. The first hen was created by God, who also created the whole world.

Furthermore, we see that every creature has its law. Autumn is followed by winter, and spring is followed by summer; however, it has never happened before. – Who taught a swallow how to make a nest and a bee fold those strange cells in combs? – Who gave fertility to the earth and fragrance to flowers? Where does the rainwater that drives the wings of the wind get into the clouds in the sky? Where does the thunder get that terrible power? Who put those millions of stars in the sky? Only the one who believes that a house can be built by itself without a builder, only the one can believe that nature and the world were created without a creator. Only he can say that there is no God who does not have reason. He who does not find God in the world will not see him even in Heaven.

2. God is. God himself instilled this faith in our hearts. As a farmer sows grain in the ground, and that grain comes up as soon as he receives moisture and is warmed by the sun, the Creator puts in our hearts the faith that he is God. As soon as a person begins to think and be aware of himself, the idea that he is one supreme being arises. What would we do all over the world, we would find nations that cannot write, read, that do not live in houses, lie in simple dwellings or caves, unworn people wander naked: but we will not find such a nation that does not believe in God anywhere. When Christopher Columbus discovered America five hundred years ago, people lived there like cattle; they believed in God and the wild American nations. – When the French nation, gripped by the foolish fever of the revolution, wanted to demolish the royal palace, they cut down the large gate on this palace with axes and chicanes, broke in until the chapel itself, in front of which stood an iron statue of Christ the Lord. Suddenly, someone exclaimed: „Down with hats in front of the holiest!“ And the enraged multitude quieted themselves before the statue of Christ, and the voice of God, the voice of conscience, came to him and took off his hat. One of them approached the altar with the greatest reverence; he chose the Sacrament, and the crowd, accompanied by burning torches, carried the Lord Jesus in the Sacrament to the nearest church.

The fool says: There is no God (Ps 14,1). Why wouldn’t there be God? Where, then, is it that every human language, from the innermost conviction of the heart, mentions God? Would so many and so many millions of people lie when they say he is God? Would only a fool be right? Oh my God, he who does not see You is a pitiful blind man who does not feel You, he has never felt anything! – At the same time, the view of this created world and the voice of the conscience echoing in us teach us: that he is God. Either you are in a field in the open air. You see above your head those millions of stars that God manages; you either see worms teeming in the dust of the earth that God feeds, be at home, you break your daily bread, the gift of God: always and everywhere glorify his holy name, pray religiously: „ I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.“

3. Perhaps reason and conscience lead us to the knowledge of God: people have gone wrong, pride has made reason swollen, sin has oppressed the voice of conscience, and people have become so lost over time that they did not even know if it was God. God sent His Son among men to enlighten their mental darkness with His divine teaching. The Son of God taught people for three years, taught them that there is only one God. Three persons are in one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God the Father is a righteous judge who punishes or rewards according to merit. God the Son became man to redeem the repentant with his death from damnation. The human soul is immortal. With the help of God the Holy Spirit, we can save our souls. Even the school child already knows all these religious truths, which even the greatest sages suspected before the birth of Jesus.

One would think that when Jesus Christ taught so clearly, and surely, there would no longer be such a stupid blind man who would dare to deny the existence of God; and yet I have already heard such blasphemous talk: „Then I will believe that he is God when I talk to him.“ Such people treat God like certain pagans, to whom the priest and missionary explained that God is not an idol carved from stone or wood, as you believe, lie he is a pure spirit that knows and sees everything, even what we do in secret.

Well, keep that almighty God, – the Gentiles replied, – we don’t need such a God because we do all kinds of things that we would not like to do so that God can see it. Robbers, fornicators and drunkards think alike, they would like to deny God so that they can do their iniquities more peacefully. Their effort is in vain; how bitterly these will feel when, at the hour of their death, they will have to stand before God, whom they previously denied in their lives. God will show himself to them there, but their eyes will be open with fear.

The French scholar and ignorant Voltaire was a famous man. During his stay in Berlin, he fell into a serious illness, and he thought that his end had come; his conscience troubled him, and he began to think of God, whom he had dishonored so many times before in his writings. You had the priest called.

The priest fearfully approached the bed of that scholar-ungod; the sick man himself emboldened him: only boldly, my dear spiritual father, do not now see in me the ungod Voltaire, the lowly penitent; I lived paganly, I want to die in Christian. Bárs Voltaire recovered from that illness and finally died in unrepentance, yet with this example, he convinced us that even in the soul of a hardened sinner, the voice of the Lord God will be heard.

For almost two years now, I have been announcing and explaining to you, according to the catechism, God’s revelation. Oh, if I had achieved that, you, dear believers, would be strengthened in faith the stronger you cling to God, to him always the more faithfully you served, then you will get there, where you will no longer know from a human explanation but from your own experience who that God is.