John Paul II

IN REALITY LIES THE BEGINNING OF FULFILLMENT

To His Excellency Rev Msgr Mariano De Nicolò, Bishop of Rimini

ur Excellency,
On the occasion of the 23rd Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples, the Holy Father charges you with extending his cordial greetings to the organizers and participants and with manifesting to them his warm appreciation for this important initiative, which for many years by now has represented a meaningful date for the Italian Catholic world.

The title of this year’s meeting, “The Feeling of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty,” proposes a very interesting theme. Christ said, “I am the truth” (Jn 14:6), and those who met Him on the roads of Palestine saw in Him also “the fairest of the sons of men” (Ps 44:3). The unique correspondence between truth and beauty, given concrete form in the Word made man, is presented often in the works of Christian art, arousing, in our own time, the desire to be able to find it in the compositions of today. In effect, contemporary thought frequently tends to maintain that the truth is extraneous, as such, to the world of art. Beauty, then, would concern only feeling and would represent a pleasant escape from the iron-clad laws that govern the world. But is this really the case?

Nature, things, persons, if we look closely, are capable of astounding us with their beauty. How could we not see, for example, in a mountain sunset, in the immensity of the sea, in the features of a face, something that attracts us and at the same time invites us to deepen our knowledge of the reality surrounding us? A similar observation led the Greek thinkers to maintain that philosophy arises from wonder, which is never disjoined from the fascination of beauty. Even what is not part of the world perceived by the senses possesses its own inner beauty, which strikes the spirit and opens it up to admiration. We should think of the power of spiritual attraction exercised by an act of justice, a gesture of forgiveness, the sacrifice for a great ideal lived with gladness and generosity.

Truth shines out of beauty and attracts us to it through the unmistakable fascination that emanates from the great values. Feeling and reason are thus radically united by an appeal addressed to the whole person. Reality, with its beauty, makes us experience the beginning of fulfillment and whispers to us, as it were, “You will not be unhappy; the entreaty of your heart will be realized–indeed, is already being realized.” Sometimes beauty can seduce and corrupt, but this degeneration, as the Gospel reminds us, represents a bitter fruit of a bad choice that arises in the heart of a person, because “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile” (Mk 7:15). In this case, man’s gaze stops at appearances and, by refusing the call to go further, the call present in everything beautiful, negates its value as a sign and claims possession of it, thus over time canceling out every trace of beauty.

St Augustine refers to this bitter experience in his Confessions when he acknowledges, “I threw myself into the beautiful things You created. Your creatures kept me far away from You, which would not exist unless they existed in You” (X, 27, 38). The Bishop of Hippo recalls, however, that it was precisely beauty that freed him from this anguish: “You called me, You shouted to me, and You overcame my deafness. You sent forth gleams, You shone forth, and You dispelled my blindness. You spread your fragrance, I breathed it, and now I long for You” (ibid.).

The resplendence of contemplated beauty opens the soul to the mystery of God. Already the Book of Wisdom rebukes those who “from good things seen, have not been able to discover Him-who-is (13:1),” since by admiring their beauty they should have been able to go back to their Author (cf. 13:3). For “through the grandeur and beauty of the creatures we may, by analogy, contemplate their Author” (13:5). Beauty possesses a pedagogical force of its own, introducing us efficaciously to the knowledge of truth. When all is said and done, it leads to Christ who is the Truth. When love and the search for beauty spring forth from a gaze of faith, we can penetrate more deeply into things and enter into contact with Him who is the source of every beautiful thing.

Christian art, in its best expressions, constitutes a splendid confirmation of this insight, by presenting itself as the homage of transfigured beauty, made eternal by the gaze of faith.

It is the Supreme Pontiff’s fervent hope that the upcoming Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples may help to spread the new way of looking at things which Jesus taught us. In this way, art can become an instrument of evangelization, helping us to promote a renewed season of missionary action.

He voices, too, his ardent wish that this meeting may be, for all its participants, an invaluable occasion for communion in charity and for growth in faith and the contemplation of God, the true, supernatural Beauty.

To this end, he assures you of his remembrance in prayer, and invoking the motherly intercession of Mary, Tota pulchra, he imparts on your Excellency, the promoters, organizers, and all those who will take part in the Meeting a special Apostolic Blessing.

I add my own personal best wishes for the success of this event, and I take this opportunity to renew to you the expression of my deepest regard.

Yours devotedly in the Lord,

+Angelo Cardinal Sodano
Secretary of State