When atheists question my faith I am often at a lack for words. How does one explain knowing God apart from knowing God? I can’t point to the sciences to justify my faith, for God, by definition, falls outside of what the scientific method is able to perceive. I believe the Bible, but I know it is far from a convincing historical document on it’s own. How can I communicate my faith? It is something only I know as a love within. Only my own existential interiority can testify to the God I know, who is closer and dearer to me than my very breath, but is utterly invisible to natural science and empirical evaluation.

I recently came across this passage from a book by John Henry Newman called Callista. It tells the story of a girl in the ancient Roman empire who slowly comes to faith in Christ. In it she encounters a philosopher with a view of God that says he is merely an external self existing “something,” but the girl doesn’t buy it. She says:

“I feel myself in His presence. He says to me, ‘Do this; don’t do that’ … it is the echo of a person speaking to me … I believe in what is more than a mere ‘something.’ I believe in what is more real to me than sun, moon, stars, and the fair earth, and the voice of friends. You will say, Who is He? Has He ever told you anything about Himself? Alas! no! – the more’s the pity. But I will not up what I have, because give I have not more. An echo implies a voice; a voice a speaker. That speaker I love and I fear.”

(Callista, 314-315)

I love this. In many ways it gives words to my own experience. The testimony of Callista speaks the truth in my heart and witnesses to me that I am not alone. I know that God echoes in all of us, through whispers in the heart and convictions of the will.

When I read the words of Christ and participate in the sacraments I recognize the author of the divine echoes within me, and see the form that has cast all the shadows of hope and beauty throughout my life.

I believe the Gospel can awaken in others this great surprise of recognition. I am not alone in knowing God, and so I preach Christ and keep the faith. I believe God is knocking somewhere deep inside each of us, and I Jesus leads us to answer. St John Chrysostom once said, “Find the door of your heart, you will discover it is the door of the kingdom of God.”I don’t think I could have put it any better.