Tuesday, October 21, 2014

The Beauty of God

God is love. Love is never ugly, and God’s love is always creating beauty in place of irregularity and unevenness.1 And at best we come to see and understand that fragmentation and precariousness ultimately belong to the phenomenon of beauty, because through fragmentation the beautiful ultimately reveals the promise it contains.2 The crucified and risen Jesus reveals that beauty may be hidden behind fragmentation and woundedness: the beauty of love seemingly concealed but really present.

Photograph by Brother Jonah. 
1. Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Fitzgerald, p. 704.
2. Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, vol. I, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, p. 460.