Truth and Beauty

Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

When is a king most a king?  That might seem like a very academic question, but it impacts how we understand and celebrate this Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.  A king, I would suggest, is most a king when he has defeated his enemies, and his kingdom is secure.  The ideal of Jewish kings is King David, who conquered all of his enemies.  King Solomon, his son, is least kingly when he is conquered by his wives’ attachment to their foreign gods.  

So for we who celebrate this great festival, when is Jesus most a king?  When He has defeated His enemies, that is to say, Satan, sin, and death.  And when did Jesus do exactly that?  On the cross.  And so, Jesus is most kingly when He is on the cross, dying for our salvation, and, at the same time, destroying the reign of Satan over this world.  That helps us understand today’s Gospel, which is Christ being interrogated by Pontius Pilate.  Of course, this was right before Jesus was led away to His crucifixion.  Pilate asks about Jesus’ kingship, alleged by the chief priests, and Jesus answers that His kingdom is a kingdom of truth.  That truth was released upon the world in the most powerful way when Jesus was nailed to the cross, the truth that St. John the Evangelist also tells us, that, “God so loved the world that he gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

Truth is related to something else: beauty.  We so often hear the false, yet ubiquitous statement, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”  Beauty, though, is not subjective, because it is the splendor of the truth, and truth is utterly objective.  Something is beautiful as much as it is true, or reflects the truth.  Lies are ugly.  Tonight we enjoy beautiful music.  It’s beautiful not simply because of the number of people, not simply because of the instrumentation, nor even the notes themselves, but because it reflects the truth of heaven.  Now, maybe Mozart isn’t played 24/7 in heaven, but the genius of Mozart, why it has stood the test of time, is that he tapped into something otherworldly, something heavenly, which helps us recognize the grandeur, the immensity, the order of heaven.  And this particular piece was made for the Mass, where heaven and earth are joined in harmony with each other in this sacred space.  Mozart maybe isn’t played in heaven 24/7, but it helps us to recognize that in this church we straddle both heaven and earth as we worship Christ our King, which is true of every Mass.  

Today we worship Christ, the King, who reigned most perfectly from the cross, and who still reigns perfectly in heaven as He continues to pour Himself out fully to God the Father for Christ’s Bride, the Church.  May our adherence to the truth prepare us for what God destines for us, a place in the Kingdom of Christ the King, where we will experience the fullness of the Beauty of God, in which we participate today.

What Makes Him Beautiful

Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion

In 2012 one of the newer boy bands, One Direction, came out with the song, “What Makes You Beautiful.”  The song talks about how this girl, who is loved by the author, doesn’t realize how beautiful she is.  My guess is there are still girls who would love to be serenaded by One Direction with his song.

When it comes to beauty, we so often translate beauty into taste.  “Oh, that’s beautiful!” tends to mean, “I like that!”  “That’s ugly!” often means, “I don’t like that!”  “Beauty,” so we hear, “is in the eye of the beholder.”

But not for Catholics.  As Catholics, we believe that there is an objective standard for beauty, even though it is diverse in its expressions.  For us as Catholics, beauty is rooted in God who is, we can say, the truly Beautiful One.  And since God who is Beauty also identifies Himself as God who is Truth, we know that there is a relationship between beauty and truth.  In fact, St. Thomas Aquinas states that a beautiful thing is that which shows the truth of that thing.  Beauty, we can say, is the shining forth, the splendor, or refulgence, of the truth.  A beautiful duck is a duck that has two legs, two wings, and quacks.  The only ugly duckling is one that lacks in some way from what it means to be a duck. 

Today Isaiah prophesies about the Suffering Servant of the Lord.  And while that servant “shall prosper, he shall be raised high and greatly exalted,” still that same servant shall be “marred…beyond human semblance.”  The Suffering Servant will startle many nations as one who has “no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him.”      He will bear our infirmities and endure our sufferings.  He will be pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins, chastised, and beaten.  That doesn’t sound like someone who is beautiful.  It does not sound like one of the beautiful people.  If you have ever seen a Spanish crucifix, you see the great lengths the Spanish would go to in order to show how much Jesus suffered.  Their crucifixes are covered in the red of Jesus’ blood, with dark bruises over Jesus’ body.  The way Jesus was portrayed in “The Passion” by Mel Gibson gives in movie form what Spanish crucifixes tend to look like in statue form.

So, given all these injuries, all this blood, the bruising, the agony in visual form, do we say that Jesus, on the cross, was ugly?  Do we say that Jesus lacks some truth as He hangs on the cross?  Was the marring beyond human semblance such that it made Jesus an ugly Person?

Of course not.  In fact, Jesus, even in His human nature, remains the Beautiful One, united as He is in substance, with God the Father.  Even in the one pierced for our offenses, Jesus is truly beautiful.  In one of the many paradoxes of our faith, there is no greater example of beauty than the Jesus who became disfigured for our sake.  And we can say that, because in His crucifixion, into which we enter today in this liturgy, Jesus most perfectly demonstrated the truth about God, and the truth about man.

The truth is that God will go to the farthest lengths to save us, and we see that in Jesus.  God will sacrifice Himself if it means there is a chance that we will respond to His love.  Jesus, on the cross, most perfectly demonstrates that God is pure gift, and will pour Himself out for His creatures, even though He has no need of them.  Jesus, on the cross, shows us the great truth that God loves us, even when it means His own death.  The crucifixion of Jesus is the most beautiful example of love that ever has existed, exists now, or will ever exist in the future.  In terms of the truth about God, the crucifix is the highest form of beauty.

The truth is that man is most himself when obedient to the will of the Father.  The crucifixion is the utmost example of obedience to God.  Obedience to God is easy when it means doing something we enjoy, doing something where we see the fruits of our labors, doing something where we see the difference we make.  In the crucifixion, we see obedience in the face of pain, only trusting that it will make a difference without seeing any immediate results.  Jesus entrusts Himself to the Father, and so shows what a beautiful human looks like: one who does the will of God the Father for the good of others.  

What makes us beautiful is being like Jesus: sacrificing our good for the good of the other in obedience to the will of the Father.  The crucifix may not be to our taste, or something that we like, but it is the most beautiful thing we can look upon and think of in this world, because the crucifixion of Jesus shows forth most fully and dramatically the truth about God and the truth about us.

From Death to Life

Fifth Sunday of Lent-Third Scrutiny

            For the past two weeks we have heard from the Gospel according to John at this Mass.  We step aside from the usual hearing from the Gospel according to Luke to meditate and reflect upon what St. John calls the main signs of Jesus’ ministry.  We do this to assist our Elect to prepare for baptism, confirmation, and the reception of Holy Communion for the first time, as we accompany them through the Scrutinies.

            These three signs that we hear about all have to do with life, and are fitting for the Elect who are preparing for new life in baptism.  Two weeks ago we heard about the Samaritan woman at the well, and how Jesus was going to give her living water.  As we all know, we can’t live without water.  Last week we heard of the man born blind and how Jesus is the light of the world.  Light is an important part of life.  Without sunlight, the plants don’t produce, which means we, and the animals we eat, don’t survive.  Today, we don’t deal with an image or a metaphor for life, but with life itself in the raising of Lazarus from the dead.

            The first important aspect is that faith is involved.  The Samaritan woman comes to believe in Jesus, and so she is given the life-giving water in her soul which will never run dry.  The man born blind has faith, and Jesus opens His eyes.  Martha has faith that Jesus will raise Lazarus.  In none of these cases is the faith complete, as if one knows it all.  In fact, if one truly knows it all, faith, the knowledge of things unseen, is not necessary.  But faith makes new life possible.

            It is faith, at least in its seminal form, which led you, Elect of God, to ask questions about the Catholic Church.  It is faith which led you to continue searching and opening the Word of God to see if this Jesus should be followed.  It is faith which you will profess before you are baptized.  This will not be the end of the journey, but only the beginning of new life in Christ, just as for those of us who were baptized as infants, when our parents and godparents professed faith for us so that we could receive the precious gift of new life in Christ, that moment of baptism was not the end of our pilgrimage, but the beginning.  And likewise confirmation is not the end of our development of faith, but another important step in the pilgrimage, not the destination.

            God’s love is shown for us in giving us new life.  God promises through the prophet Ezekiel that the way we know that God is God is by receiving new life from Him.  Jesus fulfills that prophecy in our Gospel passage from today.

            But new life is meant to be new, not old.  You don’t pour new wine into old wineskins.  Lazarus had been dead for four days.  His decomposing body was rank with the odor of death.  It looked like a body, in some regards, but was not (we use the word corpse for a body that is no longer animated by a soul).  That is how it is with us before we come to Christ.  Yes, we are made in the image and likeness of God, we have human dignity because we are rational and have an immortal soul, but we do not have new life in us.  That comes through baptism, at least ordinarily.  Before baptism, we are plagued by original sin which puts us at enmity with God.  That is why we pray for you, dear Elect, that, because you have already been chosen—elected—for baptism, the power of Satan may have no sway over you.  After baptism, original sin is washed away—death is washed away—and you are filled with new life.

            But our outsides need to match our insides.  There needs to be a certain consonance, a certainly harmony between the new life we have in our souls, and the way we act with our bodies.  Beauty comes from when the image matches the idea, and if we truly want to be beautiful, then we should try with all our might to make sure that the way we live matches what we believe.  That goes for all of us, not just you Elect.  How many times did Jesus decry the lack of consonance in the Pharisees: “‘You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth.’”  The same could be said when what we have inside does not match what we do on the outside.  The temptations are great to keep our faith to ourselves and not let it impact the way we live our lives.  That is where scandal arises, when what we profess with our lips does not match the other actions of our life; when we have new life in us, but we still act like a rotting corpse; when we are members of the Body of Christ, but we act no differently than those who do not know Jesus.

            Dear Elect of God, we pray for you, that as you draw nearer to the life-giving waters of baptism, to the Light of Christ, to new life in Jesus, that you will grow in faith and be kept safe from the Evil One so that you are prepared to put to death the old man, and put on Christ, the new Man.  And we thank you, because your consonance of life between what you believe and how you live reminds us who were baptized before to live up to that call ourselves, so that more and more will be drawn to new life in Christ that not only changes our souls, but changes how we live each day.