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     Have you ever met a real live atheist?  They do exist.  I've even seen a TV ad promoting atheism as a cause.  For awhile there were some  books by atheists - Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens - that attracted some attention.  Although their arguments for their positions have had some superficial attraction, there are plenty of folks who have responded with more than adequate rebuttals.  But the very existence of atheism is a good challenge to us to be informed and intelligent about our faith.  St. Thomas Aquinas, OP, provides some good arguments for the existence of God in his SUMMA THEOLOGIAE, but their considerable appeal can leave a some aspects of the experience of faith untouched.  The Letter to the Hebrews and the Gospel According to Mark speak to the experience of faith in today's scriptures.

     Hebrews makes one of its most famous statements about faith and then goes on to provide examples of heroes of faith like Abraham, Isaac and other great Old Testament figures.  Where did Abraham get his faith in God that led him to move to a new land?  What he had was an experience of God - something beyond the intellectual but including it.  Popes Benedict and Francis, in their joint encyclical LUMEN FIDEI, speak of faith as the response to an encounter with a love far greater than any human could imagine.  

     In the Gospel According to Mark, the incident of Jesus calming the storm gave his frightened disciples an encounter with a transcendent power.  They had to see this power ultimately in Jesus' own death and resurrection and it became something worth their very lives to proclaim.  

     It is the experience of transcendent power and love that faith offers.  We can read about it in such classics as Rudolph Otto's THE IDEA OF THE HOLY or Williams James' THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, but ultimately it is our own experience of God's love in the heart and mind that compel us to look further into an ultimate goal that we can begin to experience in this life.  AMEN