SAVING BEAUTY: TOWARDS A THEOLOGY OF BEAUTY

Beauty reminds us, dwellers in time, that we inhabit no mighty fortress: our home lies shrouded in the silence of nothingness. And so, beauty can make us anxious: our hearts, suspended above the abyss of the silence of death, with beauty standing over us, become restless about their destiny.

Beauty is an event: it occurs when the Whole offers itself to us in a fragment. The Beautiful – in Latin, formosus – arises when the different parts of what we behold come together in harmonious “form,” in the right proportion, reminding us of “the heavenly numbers” and their celestial harmony. The “beautiful” is also speciosus, it shines out: this happens when the fragment we contemplate seems to capture the Whole, to be the place where the Whole breaks through to us with the wound and gift of love. Here, the Greek soul and the Biblical vision meet. Here, Jerusalem takes Athens unto itself and then betrays her, proclaiming that beauty broke through only once in the history of salvation: in Jerusalem, for the Jews, and in a garden outside its walls, for the Christians.

In this world, the Word makes Himself known by emptying and “contracting” Himself. Quite freely, in no way coerced by the infinitely great, the eternal Word lets Himself be contained in the infinitely small, so that eternal splendor may offer itself in the midst of the world’s night. This “ecstasy of God,” when he goes out from Himself, is the mightiest conceivable call for us to live our own “ecstasy from the world,” to “go beyond” all things, towards the mystery that saves us by its beauty, a potential created when the eternal Word emptied Himself out of love. Through God’s self-emptying, eternity gains presence in time, and the divine All shines through in the fragment of the human experience of salvation.

“Two flutes,” explains Augustine, “play different tunes, but the same Spirit breathes through them both. The first says: ‘You are the most handsome of men’ (Ps 45,2); and the second: ‘He had no form or majesty that we should look at him’ (Is 53,2). The two flutes are played by one and the same Spirit: so they play in harmony. Do not fail to listen to them, but try to understand them. Let us ask the apostle Paul to explain the perfect harmony between the two flutes.

Let the first play: ‘the most handsome of men,’ ‘though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped’ (Phil 2,6). This is how the beauty of the sons of men is surpassed. Let the second play: ‘that we should look at him,’ he who ‘emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness’ (Phil 2,7). ‘He had no form or majesty’ so that he might give you beauty and form. What beauty? What form? The love of charity, so that you may run in love and love with the energy of one who runs… Look to Him through whom you have been made beautiful” (St. Augustine, In Iohannis Epistulam, Christian Classics Ethereal Library, vol. 7).

It is God’s love that transfigures the “man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity… from whom others hide their faces” (Is 53,3) into “the most handsome of men.” The Whole which offers itself in the fragment shows how finite that fragment is: beauty lays bare the fragility of the beautiful. Beauty is like death, threatening us as it approaches: the experience of beauty is mixed with sadness. Beauty reminds us, dwellers in time, that we inhabit no mighty fortress: our home lies shrouded in the silence of nothingness. And so, beauty can make us anxious: our hearts, suspended above the abyss of the silence of death, with beauty standing over us, become restless about their destiny.

Beauty troubles us: we flee it as we flee death. We transform it into entertainment, reducing it to a commodity: perhaps thus, we think, we may elude the pain of its challenge, as we are no longer obliged to think; perhaps thus we can escape the demanding passion for truth, throwing ourselves into enjoying the immediate, whatever may be had here and now.

"The beauty of all that passes is the threshold opening onto the horizons of the beauty that does not pass, which we foretaste in love and invoke in faith. The Whole offers itself in the fragment, the fragment opens itself toward the Whole through the divine beauty that will save the world. Eternity has entered time so that time may enter eternity."

In the great marketplace of the “global village,” the signs of beauty’s presence seem to be disappearing. The masks of advertising appear to triumph on all fronts over respect for the tragic solemnity and vulnerable advent of ultimate truth and beauty. The “eclipse of beauty" seems to suggest that the fragile fragment does not have the strength to bear the weight of the Whole. And yet, according to the faith of Christians, if the “beautiful Shepherd” (Jn 10,11) sacrificed himself unto death for us; if, in the fragment of the Cross, He opened our way towards Resurrection, then in Him, too, we may rediscover the beauty that is beyond shipwreck. In Him, as He leads us towards the ultimate horizon of all things, we are granted knowledge of the destiny of the fragment that was home to the Eternal One.

In the sufferings of the Servant of God (Is. 42) and in the abandonment of the Cross the Whole revealed and concealed itself, spoke and was silent about itself. There, it showed that the Whole does not only demonstrate the fragility of the fragment, but is also the horizon that protects its dignity. The Servant of Isaiah and the crucified Christ reveal beauty in dereliction: both gather the whole enigma of our human condition and watch over the future assigned to us and the world. The God of the Bible goes out from Himself and returns home: beauty comes to the world and goes forth to final victory. Beauty that came in the flesh tastes supreme abandonment and deepest communion. And yet, the suffering Servant of God and the Crucified Christ shows us the loving face of the hidden Other: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 23, 46).

The pain of the furthest separation is transformed by the fire of love, which is as strong as death (cf. Song 8,6). To die in the beauty that dies is to “abandon oneself” into God’s embrace, allowing everything to be transfigured in Him who welcomes us into another, new beauty. Beauty appearing in the history of salvation reveals the smallness of the fragment, but also its potential as the gate to the Mystery. This passage is achieved by the grace of the Lord, who came in the flesh of our history once and for all and made death His own. His death, the death of beauty, opens the way for us to the impossible possibility of life, to the death of death, to the victory of ultimate beauty over all that passes…

The beauty of all that passes is the threshold opening onto the horizons of the beauty that does not pass, which we foretaste in love and invoke in faith. The Whole offers itself in the fragment, the fragment opens itself toward the Whole through the divine beauty that will save the world. Eternity has entered time so that time may enter eternity. This is the essence of Jewish and Christian testimony, its great and simple truth: the beauty which will save the world is the beauty of the Eternal One, who called the chosen people to the Covenant and loved the world absolutely for the life of each and every person, and for the love of all.