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.