Where there is Hope, there is True Beauty

                                                                               











​   by Sr. Catherine Marie Michael, O.P.

Her eyes sparkled with joy. I caught a glimpse of something clutched in her hands, and I was curious to see it up close. The simple fish drawn by my daughter with sensitivity and care, had caught my eye with their bold colors and flowing lines in contrast with delicately rendered, melting cubes of ice. I recognized the scene from our trip to the fish market, in Japan, where the day’s catch is displayed like prizes pulled from the depths of the ocean, by those who ventured out into the bursting, raucous waves. We had watched a fisherman that day, carefully preparing to slice a large tuna and showing respect for such an abundant gift. These moments of unexpected beauty in a fish market inspired my daughter’s own expression of beauty. She found childhood joy, appreciating her ability to be expressive through line and color, and in what she had observed and received in wonder. Experiencing the wonder of beauty leads to a search for many more instances of beauty in our lives.

    When our lives lack beauty, they seem devoid of life’s luster and wonder. Viktor Frankl, in Man’s Search for Meaning, wrote about his days in the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he starved and marched to work each day, struggling to survive, but found renewed wonder in the gift of the sunsets and the beauty and love of his wife. He was made shockingly aware of what life is like without beauty. Such austere, tragic circumstances, where the story repels and tells of degradation, pain, and violence, might appear to inevitably engulf humanity in the darkness of inconsolable despair, unless there is a glimmer of light.

    Pope Paul VI wrote “This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair.”  It would seem to follow from his train of thought, that beauty offers or reveals hope. There is a fragile yet bold beauty in the first crocuses of spring that poke through the last remnants of snow. There is a gentle beauty in the light which touches the figures within Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence, in which the Christ child, the Incarnate Word, is bringing light into the darkness. If beauty is linked to hope, then Christ Jesus upon the Cross is beautiful, for out of love, He lived for us and gave his life for us, that we might follow him and have the hope of eternal life (CCC 519).

    Pope St. John Paul II wrote, “…true beauty…as a glimmer of the Spirit of God, will transfigure matter, opening the human soul to the sense of the eternal.” The glimmer of true beauty in this life is the Holy Spirit at work, igniting hope within our hearts. On a pilgrimage of faith, we can continue to seek beauty and hope, like the Magi under the guidance of the star…” (St. John Paul II, CT 60). Jesus Christ guides us by revealing that, “…the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). Trusting in the truth of God’s goodness and love to heal through Christ, our brokenness, and save us from being dominated by slavery to sin, sets us free to hope for abundance of life when we remain in him (John 10:10). Humbly receiving Christ’s mercy and trusting Him with our lives, rather than turning away in pride, lets Him turn our stony hearts into natural ones (Ezekiel 26:36).

    Although a pilgrimage of faith is not easy, Jesus assures us that He will remain with us (Matt 28:20). He says of those who would follow him, “let him deny himself and take up his cross….  Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt 16:24-26). To follow and to be like Christ then requires one to no longer live for self, but to live for Him and for others out of love (John 15:12-13). Jesus gave his life for us out of love, but his Paschal mystery is a unique event in time, that is not fleeting, but transcends time offering us his continued presence and the hope of our salvation (CCC 1085). He destroyed death, bringing hope to those who remain connected to him as the branches to the Vine.

    The Church’s liturgy and Eucharistic celebration is an invitation to remain in communion with Christ and participate in his mystical Body. Christ, who is present as Head of the Body, offers his divine prayer to the Father that we may be nourished through his body and blood, and sanctified through him. It is an invitation to attain the hope of God’s ongoing work of salvation. In Living Liturgy, Sophia Cavaletti asserts that the liturgy is a memorial that makes the event of Christ’s Paschal mystery present in our lives, not merely a remembering of an event stuck in the past. She poignantly writes, “In the celebration, these events become actual. The memorial, therefore, shows itself to be free from the restrictions of time and space. In the liturgical celebration, the human person lives that freedom” (Cavaletti, Part One, p. 13). We are then able to enter into Christ’s mysteries, which Blessed Columba Marmion asserts, are our mysteries, “because the Eternal Father saw us with His Son in each of the mysteries lived by Christ…(Christ in His Mysteries, p. 14).” Thus, God’s vision is vast and unrestricted by time, unlike our own, and the grace merited by Jesus Christ touches and is able to transform the lives of everyone who believes, follows, and depends upon him.

    In Liturgy and the Law of the Incarnation, Cyprian Vagaggini, OSB, writes that the sacraments are “channels of grace” because the “incarnation is prolonged” in them. He adds that in the Eucharist in particular, “…the divine descends into the human, into the sensible itself, in order to elevate man” (p.303).  He says further, that those who believe are in “personal contact” with the Paschal mystery and that we are obligated to include ourselves in this “ever permanent historical event, and thus [are able] to conquer space and time” (p. 304). Through his prolonged incarnation, Christ remains present to actively shepherd each person away from emptiness, and towards the destiny of eternal life (CT 5, CT 9, GD 102, RM 22, Wisdom 1:13-15, Eph 3:8-10). Dwelling within the temple of our souls, his Spirit wills to fashion each person with divine holiness.

    When my brother was unconscious and close to death in the hospital, the nurse pointed out that he was wearing a green scapular, and I recognized it as the one our mom gave to him. Seeing it prompted me to try to stay up all night praying the rosary. Any love and strength that I brought to him in his final moments did not originate in me, but came from a timely, renewed trust and reliance on Christ. I must have dozed off, then was awakened at dawn when I heard noises as if in the house where we grew up. Managing to open my eyes, I saw a vision of Mary, smiling tenderly at me with pure compassion and true beauty. Although unexpected, it seemed very natural, a vision that I cannot deny and which gives me hope for my brother. I continue to pray for him, so that he may say, as St. Paul says, “O death, where is thy victory? Oh death, where is thy sting?” (1Cor: 55-57).

    Beauty received is a gift and glimpse of the eternal, created by a loving God who offers each person further hope of the fullness of abundant life in him. Through Christ’s Paschal mystery, which is made present to us in the liturgy, we may offer our own lives in communion with God’s only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who humbled himself for our sake in order to grant those who follow him, the hope of the Resurrection, so that we may partake in God’s divine and eternal life. We are called to grow in holiness as people of hope, nourished by the Eucharist, who humbly depend on Christ’s presence dwelling within us, to beautify and beatify each other’s lives. It is Christ that you seek when you search for the source of all hope, and in Him there is great joy and the wonder of true, divine, and vast beauty.

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