Suffering With Joy

What is Beauty? Truth?

February 23, 2010

My Lenten reading so far has given me a lot to think about.  Father Romano Guardini’s The Art of Praying: The Principles and Methods of Christian Prayer is easy to read but very profound, offering gems that delight. Here’s one paragraph that gave me perspective on questions I’ve pondered for some time: what is the relationship between God and beauty?  Why does something beautiful immediately draw me to thoughts of God and move me to prayer?  Is searching for beauty the same as searching for God?  Are beauty and truth inseparable? Here’s what Father Guardini said:

God is not only the all-real, but also the all-good.  When we pronounce the word truth, we thereby express that all-embracing plenitude of pure integrity of essence which is God.  Again, when we speak of justice, purity, harmony — these are really ways of referring to Him.  Beauty is not really an attribute but a proper name of God. It is value — goodness, truth, beauty — from which all that is derives its ultimate right to be.

Lotus blossom in Suzhou, China - (c)Tomo.Yun (www.yunphoto.net/en/)

God is truth.  God is beauty.  God is goodness.  We glimpse in the shadowed beauty of this world the Eternal Truth toward which we are impelled by our very nature, unceasingly searching, searching, searching.  He is calling us, you and me, enticing us towards His pure and splendorous Self veiled in all that is harmonious and rightly ordered in this world, and in the unlovely, discordant and disordered He invites us to make right through His grace.

Thank you, God, for creating me, for loving me, and for making me want to know You in my heart forever.  Grant that I may see You in truth, beauty, and goodness in this life so that I may look upon Your face in the next.

Tags: beauty, truth, wellness

1 Comment to What is Beauty? Truth?

1. 

   This is a beautiful reflection for Lent. I have this book somewhere in this mess:) The pictures on your site always reflect this great beauty of God. To know that they are but a shadow of the beauty of heaven is amazing!
Mary333 on February 28th, 2010