Beauty can raise the heart and mind to contemplate the divine, opening up a pathway for an encounter with God, according to Catholic experts in a variety of art forms. Source: National Centre for Evangelisation.
Speaking as part of a new video series, The Way of Beauty, Tracey Rowland says while some enter the Catholic Church through an intellectual path, the majority enter through the gate of beauty.
“The idea that evangelisation requires us to give people an experience of beauty and goodness, along with truth, is standard Catholic thinking,” Professor Rowland said.
“An experience of beauty creates in us a desire for the transcendent, for the eternal, for something beyond us. We become aware of our own limitations and our need for an experience of something that is much greater than ourselves.”
Some of the more common expressions of beauty are found in visual art, music and literature.
Dean of Studies at Campion College Australia and poetry expert Stephen McInerney says while a comprehensive definition of beauty can be challenging to capture, there are some universal characteristics of beautiful literary works.
“In a work of fiction, beauty is conveyed through a pleasing plot design, characterisation and other elements like surprise and wonder, reversals of fortune and things of that nature. It’s also the pleasing arrangement of words, even at the level of the sentence and phrase,” Dr McInerney said.
While beautiful imagery may be a part of some literary works, enhancing their attraction further, the visual arts, such as painting, sculpture and photography, are often beautiful on their own.
Internationally acclaimed portrait artist Paul Newton said while each person will have their own artistic preferences, great art tends to stand out from the crowd.
“Beauty is very hard to define … but I think it comes down to something that resonates deep with the human heart and soul, something that feels balanced, there’s a sense of radiance. It’s something that you innately recognise when you encounter it,” he said.
“There are other elements of beauty, things like balance, composition and harmony within the range of colours that might be in a painting, for example.
“Great art really speaks to the soul. An attribute of that type of art is that you can look at it over and over, and each time you do, you see something more in it.”
For more reflections on beauty and evangelisation, check out the six-part video series, The Way of Beauty, available now on Evangelise Plus.
FULL STORY
‘The Way of Beauty’ that can lead to God (By Matthew Biddle, National Centre for Evangelisation)
