To Pray

Beauty is the word that shall be our first. Beauty is the last thing which the thinking intellect dares to approach, since only it dances as an uncontained splendor around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another. Beauty is the disinterested one… Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself…. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name… can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.

Photograph by Brother Brian. Lines by Hans Urs von Balthasar.