Authentic Beauty Revisited

In the ugliness of Calvary, God showed us his redemptive power, his unconditional love for his children and his everlasting splendor. He took something horrible and made us understand the sheer, almost blinding, beauty of his love for us.

This saving beauty is visible and felt. It is in the image of Jesus on the cross, in Christ's presence in the Eucharist, and in sacred art and music.

BUT! Beauty is also present in the natural world God created, like in a moonlit night, a sunrise, a field or the smile of a child.

And we as humans strive to create beauty . . . . . . Take away fine art and we are left bereft of an important way of praising God and expressing our love of God.

Quoting Pope Paul VI in his Dec. 8, 1965, letter to artists, Cardinal Poupard said the world "needs beauty in order to not sink into despair. It is beauty, like truth, which brings joy" to the human heart, and "resists the wear and tear of time."

The rest of the post:  http://catholicnotebook.blogspot.com/2007/07/authentic-beauty-beauty-continued-pt2.html
photo: sunset @ the north pole

Last Things, Beauty and Perspective

Today we heard a bit about the end times in Mass . . . 
I  started thinking about how each of us will face our own end times, whether it is because of Jesus' second coming or our own individual death.  Death and taxes, right? We are sure of it.

So, WHY do we waste so much precious time on other superfluous things? Like . . . worry, sticking to a schedule, clothes, tv, gossip, parties, keeping up with the Joneses, being embarrassed, rushing, petty differences, "beauty," aging.

Ahhhh, two biggies -- "beauty" and aging!

Aging . . . .  as a society we are obsessed with denying it.
Anti aging cremes. hair dye, plastic surgery. We revere youth. We revere outward beauty (note: "beauty" as the culture defines it). 
I recently had an acquaintance tell me something - in all seriousness - that she believed adamantly.  I didn't know how to respond without insulting her.
OK,  this is a paraphrase, but as closely as I can remember her exact words. She said,

"You know, if you want your children to be beautiful you have to marry an attractive partner.  That is a serious consideration. You need to think about these things, I mean, if you want ugly children then it doesn't matter. But I'm just saying . . . . "

I remember staring at her in utter disbelief. Then, I think I responded with something like, didn't she think it was love that should be the determining factor. It probably sounded quite trite.


This hunger for conventional beauty ignores life's very path . . . . to death.
That all of us must die is modern society’s most inconvenient truth.  In our culture few acknowledge this truth. If we did, all of this other craziness would subsist.
Fr Corapi said, "There is no real failure in this life except eternal damnation."
Quest for beauty, popularity, greedy material success, carnal pleasure . . . . it all takes us in the wrong direction.
Every choice we make either takes us closer to God or farther away from God.

I need to remind myself (constantly) of what we say in Our Profession of Faith.
I believe in life everlasting.
All my choices should direct me -- and I should direct others -- towards choices that lead to everlasting life with God in heaven.

Beauty in Words and Art

I found the graphic to the left at Restored Traditions . It seems to be a very nice source for Catholic Art. Curious about the name I read more. This is part of what I found:

Restored Traditions is an online Catholic-art gallery specializing in the reproduction of Catholic-traditional art using the Giclee (gee-clay), professional printing process. All of our Catholic artwork is reproduced on only the finest, archival, acid-free materials.

We focus on a specific niche of Catholic artwork, Religious Art, Sacred & Theological art, and Catholic Gifts, which are not commonly carried in Catholic-art stores today. Find timeless, religious artwork from master painters like Bouguereau, Caravaggio, C. Bosseron Chambers and many more Catholic artists.

I also found an interesting web site where you can find the Ordinary of the Mass in Latin and English. Here is a part of the Mass I love reading in Latin.

Pater noster, qui es in cœlis, sanctificétur nomen tuum: advéniat regnum tuum: fiat volúntas tua, sicut in cœlo et in terra panem nostrum quotidiánum da nobis hódie; et dímitte nobis débita nostra, sicut et nos dimíttimus debitóribus nostris: et ne nos indúcas in tentatiónem. R. Sed líbera nos a malo.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name: thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread: and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation. R. But deliver us from evil.

The priest says, Amen. He takes the paten between his first and middle finger, and says:

p. 471

Líbera nos, quæsumus Dómine, ab ómnibus malis prætéritis, præséntibus, et futúris, et intercedénte beáta et gloriósa semper Vírgine Dei genitríce María, cum beátis Apóstolis tuis Petro et Paulo, atque Andréa, et ómnibus sanctis,

Deliver us, we beseech thee, O Lord, from all evils, past, present, and to come; and by the intercession of the blessed and glorious, Mary ever virgin, Mother of God, together with thy blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and Andrew, and all the saints,

He makes the sign of the cross with the paten from his forehead to his breast and kisses it.

da propítius pacem in diébus nostris: ut ope misericórdiæ tuæ adjúti, et a peccáto simus semper líberi, et ab omni perturbatióne secúri.

mercifully grant peace in our days: that through the help of thy mercy we may always be free from sin, and safe from all trouble.

To Dye or Not to Dye

I had a good friend who started to go gray in her 20s. She never dyed her hair and she looks amazing. It is the joy within -- I am CONVINCED.
In my humble opinion -- WHY waste money on such vanity and WHY subject your health to the really horrific chemicals in the dyes?

I am trying to teach my kids that it is "what is on the inside that counts." Between school and church and my own I teach 300+ kids. Many are stereotypically beautiful and many are not. There are children with with skin conditions, cleft lips, obesity problems due to meds, etc.

I cannot rationalize putting chemicals onto my hair that will seep into my bloodstream to hide gray hair so I can look younger- because younger is considered more attractive in our society. How can I teach that skin diseases, cleft lips and other stereotypically unattractive conditions do not matter if I choose to dye my hair?

When a second grade girl told me recently that she was getting contacts because she wasn't pretty in glasses I wanted to cry. I reaffirm my goal to try very hard to practice what I preach -- "Beauty comes from the inside."

Ode to the Lost Trees

I think that I shall never see

A billboard lovely as a tree.

Indeed, unless the billboards fall

I'll never see a tree at all.

Ogden Nash

The Most Beautiful Woman in the World

An old, old, fairy tale from Russia tells the story of a young boy (or sometimes told from the point of view of a young girl) who was lost. He couldn't find his mother.

Villagers who wanted to help asked the child, “What does your mother look like?” Tell us, so that we can help you find her.” The little boy answered, “My mother is the most beautiful woman in the world.”

The villagers were very happy with his reply. They now knew that the mother would be easy to find.

So they went far and wide with the little boy, searching for her. Each time they found a very beautiful woman, they were disappointed. It was not his mother.

Finally, they came across a wrinkled, weather-beaten woman with a scarf on her head. The little boy ran to her with great joy. Beaming, he turned to those who had been helping for so long and said, “See, I told you she was the most beautiful woman in the world!”

At Casa Juan Diego they identify with this story because so often the person who seeks them appears dirty from a journey or bent and lined with age by suffering and worry and work that is too hard for them. When they ask the age of a new guest, they are often very surprised to find that they are 20 years younger than they appear to be.

When their guests have had a chance to shower and put on clean clothes and know that they have a place to stay for a time, their appearance changes. They are more beautiful or handsome. But, as in the story of the little boy and his mother, the beauty is so often on the inside. Sometimes it takes a little while for them to speak and share their stories, and sometimes it takes time to get to see the beauty.

Even when people who do not fit into middle-class values, even when people who do very irritating things, even when self-esteem has been very damaged by life experiences, the beauty shines through, even if it is the humiliated and disfigured face of the suffering Christ.

source:
Casa Juan Diego Houston Catholic Worker, Vol. XXVII, No. 6, November-December 2007.

What is Casa Juan Diego?

Casa Juan Diego was founded in 1980, following the Catholic Worker model of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, to serve immigrants and refugees and the poor. From one small house it has grown to ten houses. Casa Juan Diego publishes a newspaper, the Houston Catholic Worker, six times a year to share the values of the Catholic Worker movement and the stories of the immigrants and refugees uprooted by the realities of the global economy.

• Central office for donations of food or clothing: 4818 Rose, Houston, TX 77007. To send a check: P. O. Box 70113, Houston, TX 77270.
• Women's House of Hospitality: Hospitality and services for 50 immigrant women and children, especially serving pregnant or physically battered women and their children.
• Assistance to paralyzed or seriously ill immigrants living in the community.
• Padre Jack Davis Men's House: Hospitality for immigrant men new to the country.
• Casa Don Bosco for sick and wounded men.
• English classes for guests of the houses.
• Casa Maria Social Service Center and Medical Clinic, 6101 Edgemoor 77081
• Dorothy Day Medical Clinic.
• Food and clothing centers: 4811 Lillian (Tuesdays at 6:30 a.m.) and 6101 Edgemoor (Fridays at 8:00 a.m.). For 500 families weekly (open to the public).
• Liturgy in Spanish Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m.

Funding: Casa Juan Diego is funded by voluntary contributions.

Forma, Beauty, Faith

I was reading a post by Policraticus over @ Vox-Nova and was overtaken by the pure joy the words evoked in me. I wish I could express myself even half as well as Policraticus.

Here is a very small part of his post (the bolding is mine)- but the part that sent my mind whirling into that wonderful place that is filled with thoughts that are so pregnant with meaning that I am actually able to stay in the moment; all noise around me ceases, all the other things on my mind are stilled and I thank God for letting me understand or revisit something very meaningful to me.

"Does not “form” carry with it the sense of rational intelligibility? It can. But if we recall that the Latin forma does not merely mean “shape” or “contour” and that it irreducibly carries with it the connotation of “beauty,” perhaps we may permit ourselves to be taken with German philosopher, Karl Jasper's “non-rational.” Indeed, if we may appeal momentarily to medieval Christian thought, we represent to ourselves that oft cited, yet oft underdeveloped transcendental known as beauty which never lags far behind truth and goodness.

This notion of the presence of beauty may well be far from what Jaspers detected within himself as he penned his line on the “non-rational.” But the immediate sense he invokes in me refers me to the experience of beauty as spiritual bedazzlement, enrapturing and trepidation that pronounces its distinctiveness from reason and rational appetite. While it may court reason for a time, it never permits reason to have the last word."

How like beauty can be faith! Our intellect (the rational/our reasoning) takes us to a certain point but then faith takes us the rest of the way. ("While it may court reason for a time, it never permits reason to have the last word")

Faith does not need reason to have the last word.
Reasoning is a process of the human brain. The human brain, although quite amazing, still has human limitations and cannot comprehend God. Faith is a gift from God that takes us closest to Him.

Beautiful Iconicity of Language (Beauty pt3)

Fr. Stephen Freeman wrote (in his thesis at Duke University) about the iconicity of language, meaning that language, especially Holy Scripture, functions in a manner similar to the Holy Icons. He wrote: The Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council stated that "icons do with color what Scripture does with words."

Fr. Freeman turned that statement around and asked if Scripture does with words what icons do with color.

I quote, paraphrase and add to Fr. Freeman's post at Pontifications

Icons makes present what they represents. Scripture may indeed best be understood in an iconic fashion. An icon of Christ is not Christ Himself, but a representation of which He is the prototype. But, St. Theodore the Studite noted, it is a representation of the hypostasis

(the substance or underlying reality), the person of Christ, rather than a representation of His nature. This is a significant dogmatic statement, because it provides a way for speaking of Christ’s presence in a manner that is not a sacrament, in the sense of the Eucharist.

• The Holy Fathers taught that the Eucharist is not an icon, but the very Body and Blood of Christ.
  
• Thus there is not a normal analogy between an icon and the Eucharist. Neither is Holy Scripture to be likened to the Eucharist, for it is like the icons.
  
  An icon is holy because of the presence of the “person,” not because the wood and paint have undergone any change.

Christ is “hypostatically present,” but not “naturally present.” He does not become incarnate as wood and paint. This notion of “hypostatic representation” opened a whole new way of understanding the Scriptures and of speaking of their role in revelation.

Icons have many strange features (at least those painted in accordance with the canons).

• The characters a drawn in a manner that differs from photographic reality.


• Time is somewhat relative - several events separated by time may be pictured together in the same icon if there is a connection between them and they enlighten one another.
  
  So, too, the Gospels have a way of presenting the saving actions and teachings of Christ that are iconc.
  
• They frequently ignore time sequence placing events in differing relationships to the whole in order to reveal yet more of the Truth of Christ. St. John’s gospel is perhaps the most obvious in this respect. Following the Prologue there is a sequence of water stories, followed by a sequence of bread stories. Little wonder that the Church traditionally used St. John for its post-baptismal catechesis. His pericopes are far more like pictures than narratives.

It is possible to see how the Scriptures resist rational forces that seek to wrest them into one thing or another.

• One rationalist seeks to harmonize all the Scriptures in a mechanical manner that yields a narrow conception of inerrancy.


• Another rationalist seizes on the iconic character of Scripture and assumes that these oddities represent historical flaws.

Like an icon, the Scriptures present the Truth of God to us - and do so in a way that we can indeed begin to see the truth. There is a propositional character to be found in Scripture - after all, an icon of a human being still looks like a human being even if it is painted in a style that is other than photographic. But the propositions of Scripture function in a manner similar to the Holy Icons. We are not led to reason God, but to know God.

The propositions of Scripture, particularly the most confusing ones, lead the reader to see what cannot be seen in this world until we have the eyes to see it. St. John’s gospel has a transcendent beauty in its words - a beauty never lost regardless of the language into which it is translated. The beauty is more than the sum total of the words or even the beauty of lofty concepts. It is a beauty that is nothing other than the personal (personal as in hypostatic: The underlying reality) representation of Christ.

“These things are written so that in reading them you might believe.”

There exists the Gospel of St. John; therefore, God exists. God is indeed saving the world through beauty just as Dostoevsky said.

Here are links to some of Fr Freeman's newer posts with similar threads of thought. http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/tag/icons/ http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/2007/02/13/

I just found that he has his own blog called: Glory to God for All Things

Authentic Beauty (Beauty continued - pt2)

In the ugliness of Calvary, God showed us his redemptive power, his unconditional love for his children and his everlasting splendor. He took something horrible and made us understand the sheer, almost blinding, beauty of his love for us.

This saving beauty is visible and felt. It is in the image of Jesus on the cross, in Christ's presence in the Eucharist, and in sacred art and music.

BUT! Beauty is also present in the natural world God created, like in a moonlit night, a sunrise, a field or the smile of a child. (I am paraphrasing U.S. Bishop William B. Friend of Shreveport, Louisiana here!)

At our last reading group meeting a man shared his conversion story with us. This gentleman is a scientist who was raised in a Jewish family - he was a third generation atheist. His conversion began with a blade of prairie grass. Yes, you read that correctly! He told us that it was in a moment of pure appreciation of the sheer beauty of that piece of prairie grass -- that it hit him. "This is a work of art. Some greater being created this." That was the true and almost tangible beginning of his journey to finding God and the the fullness of truth in the Catholic Church.

Talk about beauty as persuasive proof of God’s existence!

Dostoevsky said " God will save the world through beauty." I concur and I believe that God reaches out to us in beauty. . . beauty is a strong communication tool. Beauty is an impetus all its own. It is why I danced and continue to teach dance. It is why my husband sings, why our daughter plays so many instruments and why our son dances.

Christian beauty is also manifest in people who live a life of holiness.

Slovenian Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik said people infused with love for the other become beautiful. It is not enough to offer kind words and do good deeds; "only spiritual people" bathed in the grace of the Holy Spirit emanate beauty, he said.

I love that wording. INFUSED with love for the other.

Cardinal Ivan Dias of Mumbai, India, said the lives of the saints can be inspirational even for people of other religious faiths or no faith at all. This is compelling. It reminds us to share the lives of saints with other people, with our children, with our spouse. . . let their depth of Christian beauty help to turn hearts to God. Sometimes we should forget apologetics lest it become a debate.

Most holy people do not often embody modern notions of beauty. For example: Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, was poor and Pope John Paul II, was ailing and practically voiceless, and yet they still attracted people of all beliefs to listen to their message, Cardinal Ivan Dias points out.

People living a holy life might also be the object of ridicule, persecution or other hardships, making them unpopular and hardly attractive to most people, he said.

But the beauty of Christian holiness is like looking at a cocoon, he said. "Some despise the worm there as ugly, while others see in it a beautiful butterfly in the making."

A world that has become indifferent and jaded by so much flash, glitz and dazzle needs authentic beauty, participants said, and it's the church's mission to point out that "via pulchritudinis." ( <--- beautiful life)

Father Rupnik said beauty is what links humanity to God and the divine. Take away the saints and angelic cherubim, and people are "left with only the animals," or worse, are alone.

I would add, "Take away fine art and we are left berift of an important way of praising God and expressing our love of God."

Quoting Pope Paul VI in his Dec. 8, 1965, letter to artists, Cardinal Poupard said the world "needs beauty in order to not sink into despair. It is beauty, like truth, which brings joy" to the human heart, and "resists the wear and tear of time." To be continued soon in a post called, "The Iconicity and Beauty of Language"

source: http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0601874.htm

Beauty

I found this quote at Henry's (Karlson's) blog. It is a beautiful poetic beginning to my post.

"With the arrogance of youth, I determined to do no less than to transform the
world with Beauty. If I have succeeded in some small way, if only in one small
corner of the world, amongst the men and women I love, then I shall count myself
blessed, and blessed, and blessed, and the work goes on." -- William Morris

Maybe it is because I am a dancer with a fine arts (undergraduate) background.
Maybe it is because my husband is a professional musician and our eldest a Music/English major. One of my dearest friends in the world is an artist and art teacher . . . . you see the pattern, I am sure.

Well, it only makes sense to me that some of the most persuasive proof of God’s existence is the one that apologists and textbooks do not usually talk about. . . .

I believe these quotes may best open the door to what I am trying to express.

<--- graphic on left "There exists the icon of the Holy Trinity by St. Andrei Rublev; therefore, God exists".- St. Pavel Florensky from his final theological work, Iconostasis (1922)

Dostoevsky says , “God will save the world through beauty.”

"There is a beauty that both transcends our world and at the same time establishes and saves our world. Rightly understood, they are also related to Holy Scripture. " Fr. Stephen Freeman

. . . . . . more to follow in my next post . . . . . . .