Beauty, Music and the Sacred Liturgy

R. JOE HESCHMEYER, a seminarian from our archdiocese and a student at the North American College in Rome, maintains an excellent blog entitled Shameless Popery, where he recently authored a post entitled The Worship of Beauty, and the Beauty of Worship. Mr. Heschmeyer notes at the beginning of his post:

A frequent source of in-fighting amongst Christians involves beauty. How beautiful should our churches be? How beautiful should our Liturgies be? And why? In these discussions, there are two points that often go overlooked:

• We Worship Beauty.
• Created Beauty Points towards Divine, Uncreated Beauty.

Obviously, we don’t worship created beauty, but we literally do worship uncreated Beauty. [At the same time,] Creation rightly serves as a sort of ‘road’ leading to its Creator: beauty below points to Beauty above.

As I read his post I remembered a homily I heard delivered to a group of young people by an excellent priest who impressed upon the youth in the congregation that Sunday Mass (and Holy Day Masses) must constitute a non-negotiable in the Christian’s spiritual life. In an attempt to combat various reasons young people gave for not going to Mass every Sunday (it’s boring, I don’t get anything out of it, the music is bad) he boldly stated that as nice as hearing beautiful music at Mass was, we didn’t go to church for the music. I happened to be sitting in the congregation at that Mass in the front row and when he spoke the aforementioned words, he looked at me as if to ask me to affirm what he had just said. While I would ultimately agree that we don’t go to Mass for the music, I couldn’t help feeling that he missed the deeper spiritual reality that the Mass must be celebrated in such a manner that its Truth, Goodness and Beauty shines forth, and perhaps because it isn’t often celebrated this way young people find it difficult to travel the very road (the Sacraments) God put in place to bring them into communion with Him.

Truth, Goodness and Beauty are the three so called transcendental properties of being. Truth, Goodness and Beauty are Who God is in His very essence. Therefore, we can’t say that God is truthful, we must say that He is Truth itself. We can’t refer to God as being good in the sense of good being a description of His divine Person. We must say that God is Goodness itself. Likewise, we can’t say that God is beautiful, we must say that He is Beauty itself. All three of these properties of being have a definitive bearing on the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy.

First, the Sacred Liturgy must be true. The real and valid matter and form must be used. The Word of God is “living and true.” The Creed is a true true statement about God and His Church. In the same manner, the Sacred Liturgy must also bear witness to the Goodness of God, His loving Fatherhood, His Justice, His unfathomable mercy toward each of us, His plan for our life with Him and with each other. Finally, the Sacred Liturgy must be Beautiful. The word of God is beautiful. The act of consecration is beautiful. The Blessed Sacrament is Beauty Himself. However, since God the Father has hallowed all of creation in the Incarnation, all creation must therefore proclaim the Praise and Glory of God, which means that everything, the music, the architecture, and especially the soul of the priest and the souls of all the faithful present must be a beautiful as possible if they are to give fitting praise.

Yes, the Mass would still be valid (presuming valid matter and form) and of infinite worth whether or not the priest were a heretic, the faithful were bored and disengaged to the last man, woman and child, the music were terrible, the building ugly, and if there were a hatred shown for the widow and the orphan. At the same time, I can’t think of a better way to show ingratitude to our Heavenly Father. Such a state of affairs merely shows our own spiritual poverty.

Ultimately, the Sacred Liturgy must be True, Good AND Beautiful. As Mr. Heschmeyer writes, “If Augustine is right that God is Beauty, then a Church without beauty would be as absurd as a Church that rejected truth or goodness. A full-fledged rejection or disregard of Beauty would literally be rejecting and disregarding God. So it’s not an option, or a perk. We need to take beauty seriously. And created beauty helps us by pointing us towards the true Divine Beauty.”

Of course, the lived poverty of Christ is often presented as the impetus for whitewashed churches, banal music, fuzzy homilies and any other number of travesties perpetrated in the name of Christ. But Mr. Heschmeyer rightly points the reader to three biblical realities regarding the right worship of God. First, we have the example of the Israelites in the desert and the very detailed instructions given by God Himself regarding how He is to be worshiped. Secondly, we have the example of the costly perfume poured out by Mary of Bethany onto the feet of Christ (and don’t forget our Lord’s rebuke to Judas when the latter bemoans the waste of so much money that could have been spent on the poor) in St. John’s Gospel. Lastly, we have St. John’s description of the New and Eternal Jerusalem and the Eternal Liturgy that takes place in Heaven. All three examples point us to the conclusion that God is very much concerned with Beauty because He is concerned with our well being and He knows we need Beauty.

While It is true that we have to guard against worshiping created matter instead of the Creator (Israel’s constant problem), it is also true that without created beauty we will never enter into communion with out Lord (the Sacraments being prime examples). Perhaps beauty in the Sacred Liturgy makes us uncomfortable in the same way that a bad husband or father is uncomfortable around a good husband or father and feels the need to justify his bad behavior. Perhaps we are uncomfortable with beauty in the Sacred Liturgy because it makes us realize that our hearts have grown cold and no longer have the energy to spend so lavishly and exuberantly on Christ. Beauty will return to the Sacred Liturgy when we once again turn our hearts to the Lord.