In today’s secularised society there is a big craze concerning beauty. Beauty contests are cropping up everywhere. Aesthetics has become the order of the day.

In his famous poem Ode on a Grecian Urn, the English poet and a leading figure of the Romantic movement, John Keats, wrote: “Beauty is truth, truth is beauty, that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Real beauty is spiritual. This is attested by the Greek word for beautiful, Kalos (which can also be used as an adverb meaning well). The latter term correlates beauty with wellness, thus providing the idea of harmony. Therefore, authentic beauty is spiritual since it is true, and, in Plato’s understanding, good. “Beauty is certainly a soft, smooth, slippery thing and, therefore, of a nature which easily slips in and permeates our souls. And I further add that the good is the beautiful”.

In the Christian Orthodox aesthetics, divine beauty unfolds God as the Archetype of Beauty, visibly shown in Jesus Christ, the Beautiful One. The Son of God is beautiful because in Him there are the spiritual infinite attributes of God Himself, namely omniscience, wisdom, justice, mercy, holiness, patience, kindness and love.

Christianity is the religion of beauty. It fosters spiritual attitudes that make our life Godly. If you are interested in leading a beautiful life and let Beauty change you, kindly give heed to the following scriptural text. “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Col 3, 12-14).

If, according to the Lebanese American artist, poet and writer, Khalil Gibran, “beauty is not in the face; (but) is a light in the heart”, then a beautiful life must necessarily be a virtuous life steeped in Christ’s compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, patience, solidarity and forgiveness. Only such Christly virtues can guarantee us to live in and behold the real beauty. Undoubtedly, the unknown author was right in her/his estimation on beauty when s/he said: “The greatest treasures are those invisible to the eye but found by the heart.”

Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap

San Gwann