Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of

truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know
himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of
truth about themselves (cf. Ex  33:18; Ps  27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn  14:8; 1 Jn  3:2).

Knowing one self to achieve a higher peace is the most persisting challenge in life. Like the
Buddhism belief that one should make a great sacrifice to reach total bliss, the Nirvana.
Following the four fold truth and the eight fold paths.

As we search for the knowledge of truth about our self, so how do come to know about
ourselves according the encyclical , Men and women have at their disposal an array of
resources for generating greater knowledge of truth so that their lives may be ever more
human.” , But how can we reach this greater knowledge. In the philosophy of Immanuel Kant
he stated that experience comes first before knowledge which was contradicted by the
philosophy of Rene Descartes in which he believes that learning comes first before knowledge.

Whichever which way we believe in we end up deciding for ourselves. But as we search for
greater knowledge of ourselves we have to be in a community wherein it can help us grow,
thus the philosophy of Martin Buber, I -thou-it philosophy which he stresses that man can not
live alone. According to him , all human beings are born social animals and owe our existence in
a certain bond of relationship to each other and to God. This is an essence of our life.
Generally, our perception towards the world is towards the materialistic objectification of each
existence and has set certain parameters in relation to each other. Martin Buber deepens our
thoughts on the relationships and bindings that we feel toward each other and with our God.

According to the Pope , we must therefore confuse ourselves on faith and reason because they
are two different things. We do not have faith because we need reason nor we need reason to
have faith,. To each his own. Our faith in one Almighty God does not depict us as a person but
it will liberate us from the burden that we are experiencing in life. We build our faith because
we believe that faith would make us reach the happiness that we are seeking in this life.

Reason because we seek for answers and we continue to learn with that reason we start
believing our selves thus faith and reason comes hand in hand. In the Philosophy of St. Thomas
Aquinas he worked out a highly articulated theory of theological reasoning. St. Bonaventure, an
immediate precursor to Aquinas, had argued that no one could attain to truth unless he
philosophizes in the light of faith. Thomas held that our faith in eternal salvation shows that we
have theological truths that exceed human reason. But he also claimed that one could attain
truths about religious claims without faith, though such truths are incomplete . Aquinas claimed
that the act of faith consists essentially in knowledge. Faith is an intellectual act whose object is
truth. Thus it has both a subjective and objective aspect. From the side of the subject, it is the
mind’s assent to what is not seen: “Faith is the evidence of things that appear not” (Hebrews
11:1). Moreover, this assent, as an act of will, can be meritorious for the believer, even though
it also always involves the assistance of God’s grace. Moreover, faith can be a virtue, since it is
a good habit, productive of good works. However, when we assent to truth in faith, we do so
on the accepted testimony of another. 
Therefore, we exist for a reason and we have faith for the reason, Our existence maybe in the
abyss of darkness and our soul may not be at peace with our human existence but these
reasons builds us to have faith and believe in one ever loving God.