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Views from the Choir Loft

The Gratuity of Beauty

Fr. David Friel · November 9, 2019

INE YEARS ago, in November 2010, Pope Benedict XVI traveled to Barcelona to dedicate the extraordinary Sagrada Familia Basilica. The Holy Father’s homily for the occasion was equally extraordinary. He said at that time: “Beauty . . . reveals God because, like Him, a work of beauty is pure gratuity.”

What a line for meditation: A work of beauty is pure gratuity.

A project of the great architect Antoni Gaudi, Sagrada Familia was granted the status of a minor basilica at the time of its dedication in 2010. The history of the basilica’s founding and development is fascinating, spanning at this point more than five generations. Its physical construction, which began in 1882, is scheduled to be completed in 2026.

Today, we celebrate the dedication of the Basilica of St. John Lateran, which is the mother church of the universal Church. Most of us are not able to be in the Lateran Basilica today, but we join in the celebration because we are in union with our Holy Father, whose cathedral it is. Many people would think it funny that Catholics celebrate the dedication of a building centuries-old and (for many people) thousands of miles away. They would also think it funny that so much time and money has been spent on Sagrada Familia.

But ours is an Incarnational faith, and so we see value in art and beauty. Beauty is certainly found in unadulterated creation, but God also takes especially great delight in what we fashion out of His creation. He enjoys the beauty of things that the Earth has provided and that human hands have shaped.

The beauty of our churches and chapels is, indeed, gratuitous. But, of course, God’s love for us is gratuitous; His mercy is gratuitous; the fact that we even exist is gratuitous. That beauty is also gratuitous does not mean we ought not to bother with it. Instead, we should consider how the very gratuity of beauty, paradoxically, makes it so necessary.

OTHER TERESA of Calcutta famously encouraged us to “do something beautiful for God.” Today, let’s do something gratuitous for God. We, who are “temples of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:19), become more beautiful and more pleasing to God precisely by our gratuitous acts of charity. Cultivating beauty in our lives may not mean the building of a basilica like Gaudi’s, but it could well begin with imitating God, Himself, “who gives generously and ungrudgingly to all” (James 1:5).

Whenever we come to church, we must prepare our hearts to be as beautiful as we expect this church to be. Do you wish to find this basilica immaculately clean? Then do not soil your soul with the filth of sins. Do you wish this basilica to be full of light? God, too, wishes that your soul be not in darkness, but that the light of good works shine in us, so that He who dwells in the heavens will be glorified. Just as you enter this church building, so God wishes to enter into your soul, for He promised: “I shall live in them, and I shall walk the corridors of their hearts.”

— St. Caesarius of Arles (470-542)

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Beauty, Pope Benedict XVI, Sacred Architecture Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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Fr. David Friel

About Fr. David Friel

Ordained in 2011, Father Friel served as Parochial Vicar at St. Anselm Parish in Northeast Philly. He is currently a doctoral candidate in liturgical theology at The Catholic University of America.—(Read full biography).

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«In the same quarter where he was crucified there was a garden.» (John 19:41) — The word “garden” hinted at Eden and the fall of man, as it also suggested through its flowers in the springtime the Resurrection from the dead.

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