The Spiritual Beauty of Christ
But beyond the recognition of the beauty of the Word of God as it is manifested in the loveliness of creation, there is the far superior spiritual beauty of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. Such beauty can be found by meditating on Sacred Scripture, or it may be discovered in the Church through the beauty of her teachings, the example of her Saints, the dignity of her Sacred Liturgy. Many are the means that Christ uses to allow His beauty to be shown forth and the holy angels help us to make use of them. For they enlighten our minds, helping us to understand spiritual things in their spiritual light. The famous words of the Russian author, Dostoevsky, “It is beauty that will save us”, were said in reference to the redemptive beauty of Jesus Christ. It is the perception of this beauty which serves as the real impetus in the lives of the Saints. For it is the perception of beauty that draws us, moves us, as it were, wounds us with a wound of love.
The 14th Century, Byzantine-Orthodox theologian, Nicholas Cabasilas, spoke of the phenomena of being wounded by the beauty of Christ which leads to heroic virtue. He wrote in his book, The Life in Christ: “When men have a longing so great that it surpasses human nature, and eagerly desire and are able to accomplish things beyond human thought, it is the Bridegroom who has smitten them with this longing. It is He who has sent a ray of His beauty into their eyes. The greatness of the wound already shows the arrow which has struck home; the longing indicates who has inflicted the wound” (The Life in Christ, Bk. 2, ch. 15). In the same vein, St. Augustine, having been entranced by the vision of the true, eternal beauty of God, wrote of his conversion experience as a spiritual wounding of longing for God:
Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for Thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for Thy peace. (Bk. X, ch. 27)
St. John of the Cross says that this wound of love is effected in particular by the interior inspiration of the holy angels (cf. Spiritual Canticle, stanza 7). They communicate to men the indescribable grandeur of the attractiveness of the Divine Spouse. The angels communicate the lights of faith which allows us to see all things bathed in the loveliness of our Redeemer. In the Sanctus, the hymn which the Church sings at every Holy Mass expressly in union with the angels, she declares together with the angels that “the heavens and the earth are full of [God’s] glory”. In fact it is particularly by means of joining in the pure praise of God, together with the angels, that we can more perfectly hear the “heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament proclaim His handiwork” (Ps 19:1). For with the help of the angels we can discover the beauty of the Incarnate Word of God within creation.
In his poem, Joseph Plunket aptly expresses this same spiritual vision of creation:
I see His Blood upon the rose,And in the stars the glory of His eyes;His Body gleams amid eternal snows,His tears fall from the skies.I see His Face in every flower.The thunder and the singing of the birdsAre but His voice and, carven by His power,Rocks are His written words.All pathways by His feet are worn,His strong Heart stirs the ever beating sea,His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,His Cross is every tree.
The Beauty of the Man of Sorrows
As beautiful as are Christ’s teaching and the example of His life, there lies beyond them a most perfect manifestation of the beauty of God in the example of His suffering and death. It is indeed a strange incongruity that the ugliest event in human history should be the purest reflection of true spiritual beauty and indeed, the fountain from which all the beauty of the Church and her Saints flows. In a conference given in the year 2002, Pope Benedict XVI (then still Cardinal) said that each year he is struck by a certain paradox which occurs in the Liturgy of the Hours on Monday of Holy Week. Every four weeks, it is the custom of the Church to sing in Monday Evening Prayer, Psalm 44 (45) which describes the wedding of the King, his beauty, his virtues, his mission, as well as the loveliness of the Bride. The third verse of the Psalm in particular praises the beauty of the Bridegroom with the words: “You are the fairest of the children of men and grace is poured upon your lips”. On Monday of Holy Week, however, the Church adds to this very Psalm an antiphon taken from the prophecy of Isaiah: “He had neither beauty, nor majesty, nothing to attract our eyes, no grace to make us delight in him” (53:2).
Cardinal Ratzinger asked the question: “How can we reconcile this? The appearance of the ‘fairest of the children of men’ is so wretched that no one desires to look at Him. Pilate presented Him to the crowd saying: ‘Behold the man!’, to rouse sympathy for the crushed and battered Man, in whom no external beauty remained” (The Feeling of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty, August 24, 2002). This strong contrast, which seems to imply a contradiction between the perfect beauty of Jesus, the Son of God, and the Man of Sorrows, bereft of all beauty, touches upon the most profound and central truth which lies at the heart of our Catholic faith. To follow the logic of St. Paul, we can say “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength, and God’s ugliness is more beautiful than human beauty” (cf. 1 Cor 1:25). The Son of God became the visible image of the deformity of sin precisely to reveal the glorious beauty of His faithful love towards us.
It is with this vision of faith that St. Bernard interpreted the verse from the Canticle of Canticles: “My dove, hiding in the clefts of the rock, in the coverts of the cliff, show me your face, let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely” (Cant 2:14). In the expression “clefts of the rock”, St. Bernard saw represented the wounds of Christ. He wrote:
The secret of His Heart is laid open through the clefts of His Body; that mighty mystery of loving is laid open, laid open to the tender mercies of our God, in which the morning sun from on high has risen upon us. Surely His Heart is laid open through His wounds! Where more clearly than in His wounds does the evidence shine that You, Lord, ‘are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love’? No one shows greater mercy than He who lays down His life for those who are judged and condemned. (Commentary on Song of Songs, 61,4)
It is precisely in the perfect manifestation of God’s mercy that the Church can know for certain that “His voice is sweet and His Face is lovely”.
St. Bernard writes elsewhere: “The Church says: ‘I am wounded with love’. ...She sees the Father’s only Son carrying His cross. She sees the Author of Life and glory transfixed by nails, wounded by a lance, smeared with abuse and finally laying down His precious life for His friends. She sees these things and the sword of love pierces her soul more deeply.” Once more the mellifluous doctor shows how to see the entrancing loveliness of the Man of Sorrows ...
+++But beyond the recognition of the beauty of the Word of God as it is manifested in the loveliness of creation, there is the far superior spiritual beauty of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. Such beauty can be found by meditating on Sacred Scripture, or it may be discovered in the Church through the beauty of her teachings, the example of her Saints, the dignity of her Sacred Liturgy. Many are the means that Christ uses to allow His beauty to be shown forth and the holy angels help us to make use of them. For they enlighten our minds, helping us to understand spiritual things in their spiritual light. The famous words of the Russian author, Dostoevsky, “It is beauty that will save us”, were said in reference to the redemptive beauty of Jesus Christ. It is the perception of this beauty which serves as the real impetus in the lives of the Saints. For it is the perception of beauty that draws us, moves us, as it were, wounds us with a wound of love.
The 14th Century, Byzantine-Orthodox theologian, Nicholas Cabasilas, spoke of the phenomena of being wounded by the beauty of Christ which leads to heroic virtue. He wrote in his book, The Life in Christ: “When men have a longing so great that it surpasses human nature, and eagerly desire and are able to accomplish things beyond human thought, it is the Bridegroom who has smitten them with this longing. It is He who has sent a ray of His beauty into their eyes. The greatness of the wound already shows the arrow which has struck home; the longing indicates who has inflicted the wound” (The Life in Christ, Bk. 2, ch. 15). In the same vein, St. Augustine, having been entranced by the vision of the true, eternal beauty of God, wrote of his conversion experience as a spiritual wounding of longing for God:
Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for Thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for Thy peace. (Bk. X, ch. 27)
St. John of the Cross says that this wound of love is effected in particular by the interior inspiration of the holy angels (cf. Spiritual Canticle, stanza 7). They communicate to men the indescribable grandeur of the attractiveness of the Divine Spouse. The angels communicate the lights of faith which allows us to see all things bathed in the loveliness of our Redeemer. In the Sanctus, the hymn which the Church sings at every Holy Mass expressly in union with the angels, she declares together with the angels that “the heavens and the earth are full of [God’s] glory”. In fact it is particularly by means of joining in the pure praise of God, together with the angels, that we can more perfectly hear the “heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament proclaim His handiwork” (Ps 19:1). For with the help of the angels we can discover the beauty of the Incarnate Word of God within creation.
In his poem, Joseph Plunket aptly expresses this same spiritual vision of creation:
I see His Blood upon the rose,And in the stars the glory of His eyes;His Body gleams amid eternal snows,His tears fall from the skies.I see His Face in every flower.The thunder and the singing of the birdsAre but His voice and, carven by His power,Rocks are His written words.All pathways by His feet are worn,His strong Heart stirs the ever beating sea,His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,His Cross is every tree.
The Beauty of the Man of Sorrows
As beautiful as are Christ’s teaching and the example of His life, there lies beyond them a most perfect manifestation of the beauty of God in the example of His suffering and death. It is indeed a strange incongruity that the ugliest event in human history should be the purest reflection of true spiritual beauty and indeed, the fountain from which all the beauty of the Church and her Saints flows. In a conference given in the year 2002, Pope Benedict XVI (then still Cardinal) said that each year he is struck by a certain paradox which occurs in the Liturgy of the Hours on Monday of Holy Week. Every four weeks, it is the custom of the Church to sing in Monday Evening Prayer, Psalm 44 (45) which describes the wedding of the King, his beauty, his virtues, his mission, as well as the loveliness of the Bride. The third verse of the Psalm in particular praises the beauty of the Bridegroom with the words: “You are the fairest of the children of men and grace is poured upon your lips”. On Monday of Holy Week, however, the Church adds to this very Psalm an antiphon taken from the prophecy of Isaiah: “He had neither beauty, nor majesty, nothing to attract our eyes, no grace to make us delight in him” (53:2).
Cardinal Ratzinger asked the question: “How can we reconcile this? The appearance of the ‘fairest of the children of men’ is so wretched that no one desires to look at Him. Pilate presented Him to the crowd saying: ‘Behold the man!’, to rouse sympathy for the crushed and battered Man, in whom no external beauty remained” (The Feeling of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty, August 24, 2002). This strong contrast, which seems to imply a contradiction between the perfect beauty of Jesus, the Son of God, and the Man of Sorrows, bereft of all beauty, touches upon the most profound and central truth which lies at the heart of our Catholic faith. To follow the logic of St. Paul, we can say “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength, and God’s ugliness is more beautiful than human beauty” (cf. 1 Cor 1:25). The Son of God became the visible image of the deformity of sin precisely to reveal the glorious beauty of His faithful love towards us.
It is with this vision of faith that St. Bernard interpreted the verse from the Canticle of Canticles: “My dove, hiding in the clefts of the rock, in the coverts of the cliff, show me your face, let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely” (Cant 2:14). In the expression “clefts of the rock”, St. Bernard saw represented the wounds of Christ. He wrote:
The secret of His Heart is laid open through the clefts of His Body; that mighty mystery of loving is laid open, laid open to the tender mercies of our God, in which the morning sun from on high has risen upon us. Surely His Heart is laid open through His wounds! Where more clearly than in His wounds does the evidence shine that You, Lord, ‘are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love’? No one shows greater mercy than He who lays down His life for those who are judged and condemned. (Commentary on Song of Songs, 61,4)
It is precisely in the perfect manifestation of God’s mercy that the Church can know for certain that “His voice is sweet and His Face is lovely”.
St. Bernard writes elsewhere: “The Church says: ‘I am wounded with love’. ...She sees the Father’s only Son carrying His cross. She sees the Author of Life and glory transfixed by nails, wounded by a lance, smeared with abuse and finally laying down His precious life for His friends. She sees these things and the sword of love pierces her soul more deeply.” Once more the mellifluous doctor shows how to see the entrancing loveliness of the Man of Sorrows ...
read more here:
The Beauty at the Heart of Things
www.opusangelorum.org/English/beauty_at_heart.html
