I’ve been thinking lately about what drew us to the Catholic Church. Long before I believed that the Church was true, I had fallen in love with it’s beauty. The art, the music, the architecture, the prayers, the liturgy, the traditions. It is all so rich, so beautiful.
It’s beauty drew me, it’s truth convinced me, and it’s goodness began flowing into our lives. The True, the Good, and the Beautiful. These are the things human beings are wired for. The things we are created to love.
And yet, it’s a fallen world. A world of lies, evil, and ugliness ranging from the banal to the horrifying. Our culture has completely moved on from any desire to adhere to an objective truth. Goodness is now relative. Perhaps beauty is also following truth and goodness into oblivion, but for now, the human heart still longs for beauty. No matter how warped our palates for beauty have become, our desire for it is still there.
Years before I even entertained the idea that the Catholic Church could be right about anything, I found myself wanting to pray the Rosary. Because it’s beautiful. Even as a Protestant, attending a Mass was such a powerful experience. Because it’s beautiful. Not because it was familiar or made me feel comfortable. (It was unfamiliar and I felt decidedly uncomfortable!) But because the Church offered something vast and rich and completely unlike anything I had ever known or experienced.
This is partly why I believe so strongly that all the aesthetics matter. The beauty of the liturgy, the quality of the art and music of the tradition, all of it matters IMMENSELY. We cannot brush it off as insignificant, it is anything but.
Dosteovsky said, “Beauty will save the world.” I believe this. I believe the Church offers this salvation, this beauty that shines through the Church in a million ways. Beauty that goes deeper than the superficial. The beauty of St. Teresa of Calcutta’s feet–misshapen from serving for decades while wearing shoes no one else wanted. The beauty of the kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy) sung by the cantor. The beauty of a crucifix–the image of the grotesque and scandalous love of God for humanity. The beauty of an icon of Our Lady with eyes that carry sorrow and mercy and a womb that carried God himself. The beauty of an ancient hymn that makes you shiver like “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.” The beauty of Michelangelo’s Pietà.
We have so much to offer that must not be swept away in a misguided effort for relevance when what is being longed for is transcendence. The human heart desires something beyond the familiar. We may feel comfortable in a coffee shop, but that doesn’t mean our worship should be modeled after one. Perhaps we need to be uncomfortable in our worship, drawn out of ourselves, woken up by the beauty of our faith and our tradition.
So let’s make our churches beautiful with architecture and art that draw our eyes not to ourselves but to heaven. Let’s leave comfort at the door. Because as Pope Benedict XVI said, “The world offers you comfort. But you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.” Beauty will cry out to an ugly, hurting world. The beauty of our art, music, liturgy, and lives matter.
Preach it sister. Couldn’t agree more. And if beauty isn’t enough of a desire to convince a person….our children would be better behaved if our churches didn’t resemble gymnasiums. Just saying.
So true! When the church is awe-inspiring my kids pick up on that fact that they’re in a sacred space. It’s strange, but our kids do better at Latin Mass than they do at Novus Ordo, even though it’s usually a longer Mass.
We started attending the Latin Mass a few months back and our kids behavior better then before (and it is longer).
Yes!
What an amazing post. Beauty truly nourishes our souls.
Photo credits please! I feel like I’ve been in some of those cathedrals. I was the friend in college who dragged everyone into all the cathedrals all over Europe when everyone else just wanted to see the bars 🙂
I’ll have to look them up when I get a minute, Victoria! I know the tall stained glass windows are in Saint Chapelle. They’re all images from Unsplash that can be used for free and I just searched “church” and found the prettiest ones 🙂
I am *pretty sure* the first is Saint Mary of the Angels in Chicago. I got excited and clicked to confirm my suspicion, haha. It is a beautiful church, definitely worth a visit if you are ever in the area.
So, so good.
“the grotesque and scandalous love of God for humanity” — it’s so hard to wrap your head around, isn’t it? And then when it dawns on you that wait, maybe — maaaybe that is — what, can that be true?!?
A lot of things start falling into place then.
Perfect timing! We are currently in the RCIA process and the doldrums of the class are so overwhelming that I feel sad every week after class. 🙁 The history of the church and the liturgy are so beautiful! Why is the class for conversion so mundane and blah? These are rhetorical questions, obviously.
Maybe I just needed a safe place to vent since I know that you are also a convert. Was your RCIA class terrible? It is just the video series with a dozen or so people with glazed over eyes.
Thanks for any encouragement!
Amy, I have a friend who converted in 2012 at our beautiful church with our amazing priests who confesses that RCIA was painfully boring–they mostly watched lousy videos. My soon to be sister-in-law is in RCIA at another church now, and has the same experience. We need an RCIA renaissance!
Thank you for sharing! It is so helpful to know that we aren’t alone in our misery. I love going to Mass but start feeling dread and gloom every week as RCIA approaches.
My friend and fellow-convert described RCIA as Catholic hazing… and he’s kind of not wrong. Even at my beloved parish, with no videos in sight and taught by the pastor, mine was still incredibly boring. It’s sad. At least it becomes a point of bonding with other converts afterwards? 🙂
I had no idea we got so lucky – our RCIA was wonderful. We knew most of it lready, but not all, and it was good to get to know the people, and hear real live Catholics saying the things we’d been reading about.
RCIA was not great. I have learned more in 2 years of homeschooling my kids and reading books! I know it isn’t uplifting but just get through it 🙂 I did and I don’t regret it!
Amy–Sorry you’re having a less than stellar experience in your RCIA class. Our church uses the Symbolon videos. They are fantastic! Have you seen them? If you’re interested I could probably get free access to them for you!
E-mail me if you’re interested
BeckysuemAThotmailDOTcom
I’m sorry your RCIA experience has not been good. Mine wasn’t either and I spoke with the Director of Religious Education. She actually gave me an alternative option and I loved it. Our particular parish was offering the Catholicism series by Father Barron and I got to use that as my RCIA. You are almost done with RCIA so this probably doesn’t help but I do encourage you to talk to the Director.
I had a great RCIA class, i’m so very thankful for the Parish and the priests that i had. I came into the Church through Our Lady of Good Counsel in Plymouth, MI. I highly suggest listening to the main pastors podcast. His name is Fr. John Riccardo and his podcast is called Christ is the Answer. You will learn a ton about the faith. It’s so amazing! God Bless sister.
Amen!
So true!
I love everything about this post! I have fond memories of the beautiful Catholic churches up north in Ohio from when I was little. Also, I love how both the protestant and catholic churches in Lucerne, Switzerland were ornate and exquisite – St. Patrick’s cathedral in New York also comes to mind. I always found it disheartening to attend a worship service and have the feeling that I could just as well be at my corporate workplace, with a dark room and large screens/stage. It was so hard to explain, but your post articulates it well. When I step into any church, I wish to be quieted and transformed into a different world.
I love the way you put this desire, Lindsay…”I wish to be quieted and transformed into a different world…” Really resonates with me too. Thank you for sharing.
I come from a non-denominational background which, sadly, tends to lack an appreciation for beauty. The one exception being the gorgeous a cappella harmony in our music. My husband and I have often found ourselves drawn to a more liturgical church setting because of the more evident appreciation for beauty. Worshiping in a gorgeous sanctuary lends a certain awe and gravitas that is missed in the “coffee shop” church setting.
Have you ever visited an Eastern Catholic or Orthodox Church? As a Byzantine Catholic, I’m curious as to your experience of the beauty of the Eastern Churches.
Wow! You are an amazing lady and a gifted writer. Keep up the good work.
Mary
p.s. You are very skilled with managing time. Don’t know how you do it with all you have going on.
May God bless you.
From Claire’s comment: “the grotesque and scandalous love of God for humanity” — it’s so hard to wrap your head around, isn’t it? And then when it dawns on you that wait, maybe — maaaybe that is — what, can that be true?!?
I love being Catholic because of the beauty of the liturgy, in English or in Latin. I have seen churches without a crucifix, maybe not any Catholic Churches lately, and the suffering can be seen only with Jesus’ body on the Cross. I agreed with the whole blog but these words about God’s love for humanity being grotesque and scandalous were what really caught my attention.
Hi Haley.
Thanks for your impassioned post about the value (and necessity of beauty)! I agree on many levels with what you have written and I think that Christians can—and should—see beauty, and particularly “goodness,” as both something in which to revel and as a valid starting point for dialogue about who the Christian God is / what Christianity is about.
Yet I also found myself confused—and ultimately disagreeing—on of your points (and what followed from it). You wrote: “We have so much to offer that must not be swept away in a misguided effort for relevance when what is being longed for is transcendence.”
To my mind, presenting the matter as a choice between transcendence and relevance represents an “either / or” mentality that actually undercuts your argument, for are you not advocating beauty as (supremely) relevant (so your comment that, “The True, the Good, and the Beautiful. These are the things human beings are wired for”)?
It seems to me that you are.
Further, it seems to me that just as beauty is critically important, so is the context within which we are appraising something as beautiful. This includes the historical context. And when we consider the historical context for stained glass windows in cathedrals we circle back to the distinction between transcendence and relevance. In other words, stained glass windows served a dual purpose within cathedrals or, more likely, offered one thing in the service of another.
This is Joseph Gies’ perspective in Cathedral, Forge and Waterfall:
“Back in the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great had made a plea for depicting scriptural scenes on church walls for the benefit of the unlettered faithful. A synod at Arras in 1025 reiterated the recommendation, for “this enables illiterate people to learn what books cannot teach them.” But wall paintings in barrel-vaulted churches were hardly discernible in the dim light.” p. 132
So stained glass was used as a means of teaching the illiterate masses and of beautifying the church.
Yet if anything I would say that these windows originally represented “beauty in the service of communication,” rather than communication in the service of beauty. In other words, their primary function was that people should understand the content of the gospel and of Christian belief, that it should be made relevant to their daily lives. This does not negate their aesthetic value (or ignore that this role is no longer pivotal for stained glass in modern cathedrals), but it shows the necessary interweaving and benefits of both “form” and “function.”
Given the above it seems to me that “relevance versus transcendence” mistakenly places each notion within its own category (and so perhaps other notions, such as truth or goodness, might also be placed in separate categories). Instead, and for the purpose of this discussion, I believe that they are all within a single category: relevance for / in the context of lived existence.
So let me ask: What if we were to see “relevance” as relating to “life and lived experience” rather than as merely concerned with “facts,” “proofs,” or “evidence?” Surely a thing can (and many times should) be the latter as well, but my wager is that relevance actually has to do with the former. And to my mind, this makes all the difference.
Please understand me: I am not stating this for argument’s sake but because I believe that situating beauty and transcendence in this manner offers something much larger (and more essential), something which I believe is also central to the point that you are making in this post. Namely, when “relevance” means “that which is essential to life and right living” this then leads to seeing beauty, truthful facts, loving relationships, lived experiences—all of it—as necessary components to a proper integration of faith and life.
In other words, I see a deep and necessary reciprocity between the experience of life (lived truthfully, lovingly, beautifully) and our best understandings of the Christian God (as derived from competent, informed Bible reading), such when properly integrated they are mutually informing and / or correcting:
a) life is richer and more authentic—and I become most my “best self”—when I live in right relationship with the Christian God,
b) I best approach the biblical text—and thus understand God more truthfully and relate to God more lovingly—when my life is oriented by the truth and love, love and truth.
So when we see beauty, or transcendence, as a necessity of “life” as well as the result of rightly relating with God then it becomes both something of tremendous value in the ‘here and now’ and a pointer (or a witness) to something greater. In both cases beauty / transcendence is “relevant” while not being confined to the narrower sense of “factual, quantifiable” relevance. If anything, beauty expands this category even as God explodes so many of our categories (such as our understanding and practice of love, truth, forgiveness, justice, mercy, fairness, etc.).
I see this to be confirmed when beauty is experienced as “transcendence.” In such cases we do not cease to be human but become more ourselves through this experience. Or better, we become more our “best selves.” Thus transcendence does not imply denying or overcoming our humanity but is the proposition of a fuller, richer possibility of oneself in the context of something greater still: for in being “superfluous” and “gratuitous” beauty points, in my view, to that which is gratuitous and excessive to its very core: love.
And so this reciprocity continues, in that the Christian God is not simply loving but is love.
It amazes me how a beautiful sacred space both calms and stirs up my heart. Cathedrals were my favorite part of my art history courses. Art and beauty meant to magnify and draw the viewer into the mysteries of God.
I think it is easy to be concerned with spending too much money on building a beautiful church when the poor wait on the steps. But I picture the woman washing Jesus’ feet with her hair and expensive oils. The position of our hearts in how we budget our wealth is what God is most concerned with.
The same things that drew you as a Protestant are now drawing me. I feel closer to the Lord than ever. Thank you for sharing this.
Thank you so much for sharing your beauty with us through your blog, Haley! I am Protestant but have always been drawn to the reverence Catholics seem to have for worshipping Christ. I too connect with my faith through rich tradition and the beauty of my surroundings. Your blog speaks my language! Thank you so much.
I am also a convert who was first drawn to Catholicism because of the great art and sacred music. A beautiful church and sacred music very much enhance worship. For me it’s very important (especially the music.) My RCIA experience was life changing. I learned so much and I’m still friends with people I met there and that was 16 years ago!
The nun who ran it was amazing! I totally agree with you. Beauty rocks!
I’m not Catholic I’m Mormon, but I have been in similar situations where people have asked the question: “why does your church waste so much money on making your temples so lavish?” I’ve given what I thought were adequate answers at the time. But your statement about feeling comfortable in a coffee shop doesn’t mean we should worship there just rang so true. Thank you for this post and your spirit.
When I was a Protestant, we were taught that the beauty of the Catholic church was a human seeking for earthly fulfillment instead of in God. Our utterly plain church building was said to point to the fact that earth is not our home, and our all is in heaven.
I’m so glad to be Catholic now! One thing that I came to grasp in our conversion is how important it is to remember that we are physical, emotional, and spiritual creatures, and God’s world and church is made for us. We are not just brains, and not *just* souls. Our senses are connected to our understanding of the world around us.