In our ministry with criminals, we too often forget the beauty of the founder of our Church by being caught up with the Word, but it is a beauty to behold as we are reminded by this article, The Beauty of Christ from the Catholic News Agency.
An excerpt.
“In what sense can we speak of the beauty of Christ? In the next few reflections, this topic will receive our focus. When something beautiful reveals itself to you, whether animate or inanimate, and you perceive it as beautiful, you allow yourself to be drawn to it. You are transported from your self to the beautiful. You may be in a stationery position, but your attention is captured by the beautiful thing. This dynamic movement, uniting your very self with the beautiful, has made you a better person for that experience. The common parlance refers to it an ‘aha’ experience. Experience with the beautiful prepares us for the encounter with the beauty of Christ. Not so with ugliness unless an artist like Shakespeare is portraying evil personified in a masterful way. The Bard’s depiction of ugliness urges us to repudiate it.
“Most assuredly, ugliness and pornography, like beauty, fascinate the eye. But unlike beauty, they prowl about to lure us into their wiles. We fix our gaze on an ugly or horrific thing, but its purpose is singular: to debase and drag us down until we are ashamed and embarrassed for having engaged in the activity. They can never prepare us for an encounter with the beauty of Christ. So saturated is the culture with offensive images that we fail to see that they weaken our ability to enjoy beauty. Vulgar media that include most sitcoms, soaps, talk shows, and TV commercials, are antithetical to an encounter with the beauty of Christ.”
Lampstand Foundation website, http://www.lampstandfoundation.org/
"The sinner is at the very heart of Christianity. Nobody is so competent as the sinner in matters of Christianity. Nobody, except the saint." Charles Peguy (1873-1914)
About
- David H. Lukenbill
- I am a California native, married, we have one daughter and live close to the American River with two cats and all the wild critters we can feed. I am a management consultant to nonprofit organizations and have an Associates of Arts degree in Administration of Justice from Sacramento City College, a Bachelor of Science degree in Organizational Behavior from the University of San Francisco and a Master of Public Administration degree, also from the University of San Francisco.