The Way of Beauty: A Focal Point of Recent Church Teaching
Sometimes people complain about beautiful churches, saying, “That money could have been used to feed the poor!” They have a point. When the multitude was hungry, Jesus gave them bread. When people were physically sick, he healed their bodies. He addressed immediate, material needs, and instructed his followers to do the same. But Jesus made clear, too, that besides physical needs, people also have spiritual needs. “One does not live by bread alone,” he said (Matt 4:4). The soul needs to be fed as well.
Beauty is a gift from God that feeds the soul. Indeed, as recent Church teaching has frequently reminded us, beauty is a “way to God,” and on this journey Jesus is our guide. Being a veiled encounter with God, beauty brings us up short, naturally calling forth delight, wonder, and admiration. More than an instrument, beauty is a place of arrival. God’s gifts of beauty—glimpsed in the here and now—refresh us, inspire us, and spur us on. In our pastoral outreach, we should therefore not overlook its power to attract and rejuvenate.
A Focal Point of Recent Church Teaching
From Vatican II onward, Church teaching has consistently pointed to the importance of beauty for the spiritual life. Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Sacred Constitution on the Liturgy (1963), observes that sacred arts “are oriented toward the infinite beauty of God, which they attempt in some way to portray by the work of human hands” (122). In the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1993), we read: “All creatures bear a certain resemblance to God, most especially man, created in the image and likeness of God. The manifold perfections of creatures—their truth, their goodness, their beauty—all reflect the infinite perfection of God” (41).
Pope John Paul II subsequently pointed to the relationship between beauty, truth, and goodness in Fides et Ratio (1998) and considered the relationship between God’s creative power and the work of human artists in his (1999) “Letter to Artists.” Pope Benedict XVI, in 2006, commissioned his Pontifical Council for Culture to consider the pastoral implications flowing from the via pulchritudinis (“way of beauty” to God), and later meditated on beauty in talks he gave in 2009 and 2012. More recently, Pope Francis has repeatedly reminded us that God is beautiful, God’s creation is beautiful, life with Christ is beautiful, and our proclamation of Christ should be beautiful as well. He put it succinctly in Evangelii Gaudium §167 (2013):
Proclaiming Christ means showing that to believe in and to follow him is not only something right and true, but also something beautiful, capable of filling life with new splendor and profound joy, even in the midst of difficulties. Every expression of true beauty can thus be acknowledged as a path leading to an encounter with the Lord Jesus. . . . A formation in the via pulchritudinis ought to be part of our effort to pass on the faith.
Since then, the new (2020) Directory for Catechesis (108) has elaborated: “In order to reach the human heart the proclamation of the Risen One must shine forth with goodness, truth, and beauty. In this sense, it is necessary that every form of catechesis attend to the ‘way of beauty.’ . . . All beauty can be a path that helps lead to the encounter with God”
Beauty in the Bible
The “way of beauty” is not, however, a new concept for the Church. It is firmly rooted in the Bible. From the Old Testament we learn that God is both beautiful (“clothed with majesty and glory, robed in light” [Psalm 104:1-2]) and the source of all beauty (Wisdom 13:1-5). Humankind, created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27), reflects God’s beauty. So too, according to Scripture, does the whole of creation (whose splendors are sung in many a psalm). The trees in God’s garden are not only good for food, they are also “delightful to look at” (Genesis 2:9). God’s beauty shines forth from Mt. Zion, “perfect in beauty” (Psalm 50:2), and the grandeur of Solomon’s Temple shows that human artistry can pay fitting tribute to God’s majesty (Kings 6-8). In the poetic Song of Songs, we see how beauty stirs the love between the Lord and his people. This biblical book foresees Christ’s beauty in the beloved, who “comes forth like the dawn, as beautiful as the moon, as resplendent as the sun” (6:10).
In the New Testament, all insights into beauty converge in the encounter with Jesus Christ, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14), who is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). The glory of God shines on his face (2 Corinthians 4:6). Interestingly enough, Christ’s beauty does not necessarily derive from his physical appearance. Though we might expect the incarnate Son of God to be, beyond dispute, the handsomest man who ever lived, Scripture is surprisingly silent on the matter of Jesus’s looks. The New Testament accounts say little about them, and two Old Testament verses commonly applied to him seem to contradict one another. One, Psalm 45:3, says: “You are the most handsome of men; fair speech has graced your lips, for God has blessed you forever.” Whereas the other, Isaiah 53:2, says: “He had no majestic bearing to catch our eye, no beauty to draw us to him. He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, knowing pain, like one from whom you turn your face.”
St. Augustine resolves this tension by locating the source of Christ’s loveliness in God’s love, which shines through Jesus (see Homily IX on the First Epistle of John). Love, Augustine says, is “the beauty of the soul.” God’s love is transformative. It burns away the ugliness of sin. The more we dwell in God’s love, the more we come to resemble God, who is love, and perfectly lovely.
Christ as our Guide on the Way of Beauty
On the “way of beauty” to God, Jesus serves as our guide, example, and source of grace. He (1) attunes our senses to God’s beauty; (2) proposes a beautiful vision of human fulfillment (God’s kingdom); (3) demonstrates how to live beautifully; and (4) gives us the grace we need to walk this path to the end.
Before speaking more specifically of how Jesus does all of this, a clarification is in order. For good reason, the Christian tradition has long underscored the essential relationship between beauty, truth, and goodness. This classical-philosophical notion (Plato, Aristotle), developed theologically by St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, Denys the Areopagite, and more recently Hans Urs von Balthasar, holds that beauty is a property of being that is inseparably linked to truth and goodness, which, too, are properties of being. Together goodness, truth, and beauty (collectively known as the “transcendentals”) help us to live “life on a higher plane” (as Evangelii Gaudium §10 puts it). They facilitate our ascent to God (“The Good, the True, and the Beautiful”), who is the eternal source and the ultimate fulfillment of all that is. Drawing closer to God enables us to share ever more in the fullness of God’s life and being. Jesus said, “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). St. Paul said, in God we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). And St. Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is a human person fully alive.”
Note that in this scheme, beauty never stands detached from truth and goodness. Neither a lie nor an evil act is ever truly beautiful, regardless of how it may appear at first. On the other hand, good and true things are always in some deep way beautiful.
To picture the ascent to God, we might recall Jacob’s dream of the ladder that rests on the ground and rises to the heavens (Genesis 28:10-22). On this ladder we find God’s messengers going up and down. Applying this image to the spiritual life, observe how at some points in our life we seem to be close to God and very much alive—happy, at peace, and more fully the person we are called to be—but at others, sadly, not so much (as when our conscience is troubled, or we feel listless, depressed, or even dead inside). We may ascend or descend on this spiritual ladder-of-being, but ideally we draw near to God on high—to heaven, where we share fully in God’s fullness of being—following the path of Jesus in his Ascension. Attesting to the beauty of this Journeyer and his journey is the reaction of the apostles as they watch him ascend into heaven. Though he has already vanished, they cannot help but stare (Acts 1:11). This is what true beauty does. It surprises and astonishes us. We find it hard to look away.
Beauty, truth, and goodness help us to follow Jesus in this ascent. Recalling the image of the ladder, we might think of goodness and truth as the side rails, and beauty as the rungs. Better yet, we may see Jesus himself as the ladder, for he is the “way” that leads to heaven (John 14:6). St. Bonaventure says as much in his Journey of the Mind to God (ch. 4):
If a man falls into a pit, he will lie there until someone reaches down to help him out. In the same way, it was impossible for men to rise completely from the pit of the senses to the true seeing of themselves, and, within themselves, of the Eternal Truth, until that Truth, assuming human nature in the Person of Christ, became unto them a ladder, restoring the first ladder broken by Adam.
Jesus has come down from heaven to help us rise to eternal life. In this salvific work he has enlisted beauty, truth, and goodness—so vivid in his own life—to our benefit. The Catechism (319) affirms this point when it says: “God created the world to show forth and communicate his glory. That his creatures should share in his truth, goodness, and beauty—this is the glory for which God created them.” Whenever we are in the presence of goodness, truth, and beauty, we get a taste of how God, and life with God, is. These transcendentals inspire us and spur us on, offering a foretaste of future fulfillment.
Let us consider now more specifically how Jesus facilitates our ascent.
Attuning the Senses to God’s Beauty
One way Jesus aids our progress is by attuning our senses to God’s beauty. Or rather, as St. Bonaventure puts it: he helps us “recover our spiritual senses of hearing and sight,” which have been impaired by sin. In our fallen world, self-absorption and our quickness to judge, among other things, distort our vision. We see the splinter in our brother’s eye rather than the beam in our own (Matt 7:1-5), and we fail to see the beauty of loving service and abandonment to God (Luke 7:36-47; John 13:5-8). Jesus warns of blind guides (Matt 15:14; Luke 6:39) and deafness to God’s music (Matt 11:16-17).
In the course of his ministry, Jesus opens his followers’ eyes and ears, both literally and figuratively. He helps them to “put on the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16). When he first calls his disciples, he says, “Come, and you will see” (John 1:39). Besides showing God’s power to heal physical ailments (Matt 11:5-6), Jesus also reveals the depth of reality that lies beyond the physical. During the Sermon on the Mount, he draws attention to the birds of the sky and the splendor of wildflowers, then observes that God provides for these and for his children as well (Matt 5:27-30). When a widow puts two coins in the temple treasury, Jesus illuminates the beauty of her gesture, which testifies to wholehearted faith (Mark 12:41-44). Jesus repeatedly draws attention to the worthiness of those—like Zacchaeus, the adulterous women, people with leprosy—whom others have excluded or condemned. Sent to us as the “light of the world” (John 8:12), Jesus casts his light so that we may see life clearly. His words and deeds expose God’s kingdom, present in our midst. Like Jacob, we wake to realize: “Truly the Lord is in this spot, although I did not know it!” (Genesis 28:16). At times, arriving at clear perception is slow and difficult. Jesus’s disciples, for example, have trouble accepting his death as good and beautiful, and they are slow to recognize the risen Lord (Luke 24:16, 37).
Proposing a Beautiful Vision of Human Fulfillment
Beauty attracts, it inspires us, it urges us on. Countless lovers, filled with the image of their beloved, have turned their life upside down in a quest to win the favor of the one they adore. Countless revolutionaries have set out to make a more perfect world, energized by an inner vision of heroism and of the wonderful society they intend to build. Jesus, in his own, far more comprehensive way, has set before humanity a vision of fulfillment that has never failed to inspire. In this way, too, he aids us as we travel the via pulchritudinis. He has brought “good news,” a captivating vision of our shared human life brought to fruition. Jesus uses various terms to speak of this fulfillment, including “God’s kingdom,” “eternal life,” and “heaven.”
He sketches it at the very start of his public ministry (see the Beatitudes) and proclaims it even in his dying words on the cross (“I assure you: this day you will be with me in paradise” [Luke 23:43]). It is a vision of what life looks like when God’s love prevails. When that happens, the blind recover their sight, the deaf hear, the sick are healed, the sorrowing are consoled, and the dead are raised to life. Those who are persecuted for the sake of holiness receive their reward in heaven (Matt 5:1-12; 11:4-6). We learn that those who believe in Christ will have eternal life (John 3:16). The Book of Revelation (chapter 21) puts the capstone on Christ’s preaching, showing the “new heavens and new earth” he has come to bring. In this “new Jerusalem,” “beautiful as a bride,” there are no tears, death, mourning, or crying out in pain. Christ is enthroned and “the former world has passed away.”
Demonstrating How to Live Beautifully
Besides attuning our senses to God and proposing a marvelous vision of fulfillment, Jesus also serves us along the “way of beauty” by demonstrating how to live beautifully. He shows us what a human life fully attuned to God looks like concretely.
The key to this attunement is prayer. This is what enables Jesus to live in harmony with the will of God, and us in turn as well. In Luke’s Gospel we see him, “full of the Holy Spirit,” led by the Spirit into the wilderness. There, he refuses the devil’s deceptive vision of what our modern world calls “the good life” (a life of immediate satisfaction, personal power, and self-aggrandizement) in favor of alignment with God’s will. Repeatedly thereafter we find Jesus, in the course of his public ministry, turning to God in prayer (Luke 5:16; 6:12; 9:28; 22:41).
Note that the power of Jesus’s attractiveness arises not so much from his eloquence and charisma—though he certainly captivated crowds with his stories and sayings—as from his fidelity to God, who is good and true. Jesus’s will is conformed to the Father’s, and his deeds match his words. His life is thus well-ordered and harmonious. Rather than trying to cut a beautiful figure (focusing on beauty in isolation), Jesus concerns himself with doing God’s will, which automatically leads to true and good works. Truth and goodness, says the Catechism (§2500), are beautiful in and of themselves.
As Jesus, the “pioneer of our salvation” (Hebrews 2:10), proceeds us on the pathway of life, he shows us what it means to be human, and how to truly live well (Gaudium et Spes §22). At the heart of his incarnation of beauty is a mysterious revelation: we must die in order to live. The egoistic self must let go of itself in loving service. It must, ever more in the course of a lifetime, open itself to God and neighbor. This surrender is what makes human life truly beautiful. In the Bible, we see it depicted in an array of iconic images: Jesus feeding the crowd, Jesus welcoming sinners, Jesus washing the disciples’ feet.
Giving us the Grace We Need
We see the beauty of Jesus’s humble service most powerfully in his death on the cross. Paradoxically, the sight of his wounded body letting go of life fascinates and attracts us. Jesus’s willful acceptance of his death seals his beauty, for thus does he complete his mission and reveal the depth of God’s love. The truly beautiful life, he shows, is lived beautifully all the way to the end.
For most of us, the idea of self-surrender is a scary idea, especially when it involves actual physical suffering and death. It is one thing to acknowledge the beauty of another’s sacrificial act on our behalf, but how does one find the courage to die for the sake of others oneself? Is “living beautifully” (in the deep sense) reserved for the precious few—the saints, the heroes of the faith?
The answer is no, this calling is not for the few. Everyone is called to live his or her life beautifully (that is, to be a saint.) But we are right in acknowledging that living beautifully is not a given. We do not necessarily pursue the good. We are not automatically honest and true. We have to choose these things, we have to commit to them. The beauty of our life is to some degree a given, for we are made in God’s image, but it only comes fully into its own (shining ever more brightly) when we cooperate with God’s plan. What this plan involves in practice is accepting and sharing God’s love, regardless of the cost.
Here, then, is one more way that Jesus helps us to follow the via pulchritudinis. By giving us his Spirit, Jesus supplies the grace we need to set out and to persevere. The Holy Spirit pours out God’s love in our hearts, and this love drives out fear. The Spirit emboldens us, prays through us, gives us the words we need, and points the way. More than a wise moral exemplar, Jesus is the Son of God, the Word through whom all things were made, the Alpha and the Omega. For love of us, he has emptied himself. Out of love, he leads us safely through death into the fullness of life. Through his Spirit, Jesus stays with us always (Matt 28:20), enabling us to become fully the person God had in mind when he made us (Gaudete et Exsultate §32).
The Saving Power of Beauty
Our world needs the beauty the Church has to bring. Max Weber (and Charles Taylor after him) has noted the “disenchantment” that characterizes modern times. Without faith in God we overlook the wondrousness of life itself and the happy high road that beckons. Many find their lives lacking in luster and touched by despair. Goodness appears unattainable, and truth and beauty seem to be nothing more than the limited perspectives of individuals. Christ, however, wants to open our eyes, that we may see and rejoice in the wonders God does, and travel alongside him on the road to heaven. With Christ, we discern God’s design in nature, his loveliness in the afflicted, and “seeds of His word” in other beliefs and cultures (Gaudium et Spes §62).
When we cling to the Lord, even defeat and suffering reveal beauty. Often I have found this to be true in my own life. During times when goodness and truth seemed absent, I have nonetheless found saving consolation in the resilience of shattered people, in the beauty of a bit of music, in the stupendous vastness of the stars. Dostoyevsky said, “The world will be saved by beauty.” In fact, this salvation has already arrived. May our senses be attuned to the Beautiful One who has brought it!
