Beauty has a power to transform the soul and instill gratitude in a way that few things have. Confucius understood this and suggested that beauty is the greatest of all teachers. People can doubt almost anything, except beauty.
\nRon Rolheiser, OMI<\/p>\n
Why can’t beauty be doubted? Because beauty, like oneness, truth, and goodness is a transcendental property of being itself. “All being is one, true, good, and beautiful,” states classical philosophy. Thus, beauty needs no justification beyond itself. Beauty can be solely for beauty’s sake. Moreover, as a transcendental property of being, beauty shows us something of God. To experience beauty is to see some of God’s colour, to become homesick for heaven.<\/p>\n
But, beauty isn’t always pretty. It can be revealed in the perfection of a Michelangelo sculpture but it can also be seen in the wrinkles and limp of an old woman or in a cup of water given to an old man on the street.<\/p>\n
Today, a number of writers are suggesting that our neglect of the importance of beauty is one of the major reasons why less people are interested in the church. Already a generation ago, Hans Urs Von Baltasar had emphasized beauty as a key component both in how God speaks to us and how we are meant to speak about God to the world. More recently, writers such as Robert Barron, Kathleen Norris, and Andrew Greeley, among others, have echoed those sentiments. We must, as Barron puts it, “stop building beige churches”.<\/p>\n
In the face of brutality, what’s needed is tenderness; in the face of hype and ideology, what’s needed is truth; in the face of bitterness and curses, what’s needed are graciousness and blessing; in the face of hatred and murder, what’s needed are love and forgiveness; and, in the face all the ugliness and vulgarity that so pervades our world and the evening news, what’s needed is beauty.<\/p>\n
God speaks through beauty and so must we – and we must believe enough in people’s sensitivity and intelligence to trust that they will understand.<\/p>\n
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