Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Saints and Beauty


Zenit have just posted an extract of the Pope's question and answer session with the clergy of Diocese of Bolzano-Bressanone. As important as the rational is in his thought, beauty, whether it is in the form of music or the plastic arts or human loving as we see it in lives of the saints, calls us to make the intuitive leap into faith.
Still, Benedict XVI continued, though the importance of reason cannot be undermined, "I did once say that to me, art and the saints are the greatest apologetic for our faith."

He explained: "The arguments contributed by reason are unquestionably important and indispensable, but then there is always dissent somewhere.

"On the other hand, if we look at the saints, this great luminous trail on which God passed through history, we see that there truly is a force of good that resists the millennia. […] Likewise, if we contemplate the beauties created by faith, they are simply, I would say, the living proof of faith."

Epiphanies

The Pope pointed to the example of the cathedral where he was meeting with the priests. "It is a living proclamation," he said. "It speaks to us itself, and on the basis of the cathedral's beauty, we succeed in visibly proclaiming God, Christ and all his mysteries: Here they have acquired a form and look at us."

The Holy Father said great works of art "are all a luminous sign of God and therefore truly a manifestation, an epiphany of God."

"I think the great music born in the Church makes the truth of our faith audible and perceivable," he continued. "In listening to all these works […] we suddenly understand: It is true! Wherever such things are born, the Truth is there. Without an intuition that discovers the true creative center of the world, such beauty cannot be born."

Pay for the soul of Bishop of Bolzono-Bressanone, Wilhem Egger, who died a few days after the Popes visit.

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