To Answer Descartes

It happened on the bus one morning that I was suddenly and very intensely challenged by Descartes. He took the empty seat next to me and, with much less pomp and circumstance than I would have expected, said “I think, therefore I am.”

It was not so much a question as a declaration which demanded a response in kind.

Clearly since I was having a fictitious conversation with a dead philosopher, I recognized my own ability to think, and more specifically, my ability to reason, a capability which many theologians, including St. Thomas Aquinas, take to be our uniquely human function. I know that my reason is a defining characteristic of my humanity, but it does not explain why I am and why I continue to exist in a state where I can think and I can reason. There is nothing I am aware of doing which perpetuates my existence, nothing which is either voluntary or involuntary that I know of which keeps me in this world.

At this point, it must be told that I believe in the existence of God. As He is responsible for the institution of the entirety of creation, He is also responsible for maintaining that creation in existence. God created man out of love; He became incarnate out of love; He died for man’s sins out of love. I exist only as God continues to love me.

I see an interesting parallel to my temporal relationships in this idea of love inextricably tied to being. Sometimes I feel that I am only held in one place, in body, mind and soul, by the love of my family and friends. It is when the love of others is distant or absent that I am forced to reflect upon what love still may exist in that void. I always find God there, though He does not always reveal himself immediately. Is that not what we want most when we feel alone? To know unequivocally that we are loved? There is a security and peace in such knowledge.

And then we are back to knowledge and to thought. Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. Descartes was searching for something which he could not doubt, but the only thing he could not doubt was that he was thinking while searching. I see the answer to that search every time I see the host raised on high at the mass. God has revealed himself to me in the Eucharist, and the very sacrifice which gives meaning to the transubstantiation we celebrate in that Eucharist proves to me beyond a doubt that I am loved to a degree which I cannot fathom. Secure in this knowledge, I can move past Descartes' search.

I am loved, therefore I am.