A reflection on beauty which me and one of my best friends, Katie, were just considering together:
"Deep truth heals your minds, and deep goodness heals your will, but deep beauty wounds your heart. Deep beauty hurts." - Peter Kreeft
It reminds me of the wound of love that St John of the Cross talks about and the Transfixing of St. Teresa of Avila. Have you ever seen that statue where she is in ecstasy?
Her heart is being pierced by a seraph angel with the love of God. He delights (almost sadistically but really excitedly) to cause her this pain. She is in rapture at receiving her invisible Bridegroom through the ministry of His messenger, the angel.
"The Bridegroom is here! Come out to meet Him!
"How beautiful are the feet of Him Who brings good news!"
And if His feet are beautiful how much more His face! How much more intense is the beauty of His Heart to the one who loves that Heart.
Maybe beauty wounds because it opens up that which it penetrates. Beauty cuts and molds the receiver/perceiver into the shape of itself. Beauty is diffusive of itself. It makes everything it shines upon beautiful. Every man who has ever seen a terribly beautiful woman knows what I am talking about.
Katie: I think he [Peter Kreeft] was just getting at that when we experience real beauty, we get a glimpse of the creator, of what we were created for, but it’s just a glimpse and our hearts want it so badly that we’re wounded because it’s not ours now." - Katie
Myself: We don’t even understand it [beauty]... and that wounds us...our lack of being able to receive its fullness hurts us… but then it increases our willingness to become worthy of such Beauty... like a man who knows he wants a particular woman; he has to become worthy of her and it is painful until he becomes such and is deemed as such by her.
Katie: But we’ll always be incomplete in this world.
Myself: Maybe our own recognition of our lack of beauty, our not living up to our beautiful dignity as Beauty’s image... that is what pains us. The piercing truth that I am not worthy of Beauty yet I compulsively need it.
"Why doesn't God let all of us hear this angel music all the time if it's so beautiful?... Maybe He does but we don't hear it because we let wordly wax grow in our souls' ears... Or maybe not. Maybe it's not our folly but God's wisdom and mercy that insulates us from the angels' music... Maybe God puts cotton in our ears because such great beauty would drive us mad!" - Peter Kreeft
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