Beauty is objective

Our contemporary western culture is twisting the real meaning of beauty. It is in fact defining it in a rather subjectivist way. Beauty has become fragmented, racist, lonely, irresponsible and utterly individual. It came to be equated only with an insatiable pleasure. No wonder why hedonism is so rife in our mode of perceiving reality. Appearance is the magical word which describes what reality looks to the beholder. The physically attractive shape of a person is what absolutely counts.

An uncontrolled passion is the spirit which gives people the impression that they are really enjoying life. This narrow conception of beauty is corrupting and wasting our time, money and relationships. Today's erroneous understanding of beauty calls for an urgent reform.

I firmly believe that a meditative glance at the Franciscan view of beauty would give us a clearer and a more appropriate picture of what real beauty stands for.

Beauty is objective. It is not imprisoned to what is seen but is a window to transcendental being and qualities. While appreciating the visible colours, textures, or sounds it goes beyond the world of time and space and enters the domain of eternity. It points to virtues and a new way of being which make a person exteriorly and interiorly beautiful. In his simplicity, St Francis brilliantly summarises this concept of beauty in his Prayer In Praise Of God. There, Francis calls God: "You are beauty". But what does the Poverello mean by God's beauty? In an astounding manner Francis explains this beauty in two ways. First, he tackles the physical beauty of God as seen in his creation. In his Canticle Of Brother Son the Seraphic Father magnificently praises God's exterior beauty in the way he is present in brother sun, sister moon and the stars, brothers wind and air, sister water, brother fire and sister and mother earth: "Praised be you my Lord with all your creatures".

Second, Francis explores moral beauty by delving deeper into the mystery of a personal God. In his Prayer In Praise Of God the Poverello describes God's interior beauty as being truth, wisdom, endurance, peace, joy, gladness, justice, moderation, gentleness, protection, defence, courage, faith, hope, consolation and eternal life. How wonderful would we be if we all strive to have this interior beauty of God? How true would Dostoevsky's dictum become in us and in others' lives: "Beauty will save the world!"