Pints With Aquinas - What is Beauty? Pope Benedict Answers | Mother Natalia

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

Mother Natalia taks about Beauty and What Pope Benedict had to say about it. 🟣 Join Us on Locals (before we get banned on YT): https://mattfradd.locals.com/ 🎧 Mother's Podcast: https://whatgodisnot.com/ 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🚫 FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/matt 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd We get a small kick back from affiliate links

Christ is risen. I'm Mother Natalia, a Byzantine Catholic nun from Christ the Bridegroom Monastery, and this is Pines with Aquinas. Today I want to talk to you about beauty. I want to talk about beauty first of all because I think it's just a really important topic for our times today, but also because it's basically all I've been praying with for the past several months, and so it's kind of all I have to talk about. I want to share a lot from something that a friend of mine shared with me recently, which is a message that when Pope Benedict XVI, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, he gave this message to a communion and liberation meeting in 2002.

And the whole message is about beauty. And he says at one point in it, Of course we must not underrate the importance of theological reflection, of exact and precise theological thought. It remains absolutely necessary. But to move from here to disdain or to reject the impact produced by the response of the heart in the encounter with beauty as a true form of knowledge would impoverish us and dry up our faith and our theology. We must rediscover this form of knowledge.

It is a pressing need of our time. A pressing need of our time. A pressing need of our time. In a world with so much access to beauty, we seem to be blinded to it. Because beauty has been, I think in a lot of ways, cheapened by very access, by the fact that we always have it at arms reach. It's been distorted for the sake of convenience. In our current society, we want to have beauty, to possess it, to own it,

with little to no sacrifice and with little to no sacrifice and with little to no longing. Because beauty is one of the greatest gifts that God gives us. And I just want to remind you that the devil does not have the power to create anything. Which means all he can do is distort or disorder that which is good. Right? So any evil is really just a lack of good. It's just a perversion of something that's good. And this is what he does to beauty. One of the quotes from Cardinal Ratzinger, he says, Plato contemplates the encounter with beauty

as the salutary emotional shock that makes man leave his shell and sparks his enthusiasm by attracting him to what is other than himself. Man, says Plato, has lost the original perfection that was conceived for him. He is now perennially searching for the healing primitive form. Nostalgia and longing impel him to pursue the quest. Beauty prevents him from being content with just daily life. It causes him to suffer. In a Platonic sense, we could say that the arrow of nostalgia pierces man,

wounds him, and in this way, gives him wings, lifts him upwards towards the transcendent. So according to Plato and Cardinal Ratzinger here, beauty is something that causes suffering, because it causes longing. I think this is what it means when we talk about being wounded by love, which is something the saints often talk about,

being wounded by love. Because it creates in us, no, it doesn't create in us. It makes us aware of this ache for heaven that is within us. Beauty forces us to see that which we are longing for and that which we can't have in completion until heaven, which is why we cheapen it, which is why we cheapen it, which is why we distort it,

because we don't like waiting, we don't like longing. Cardinal Ratzinger also quotes a Byzantine theologian, which obviously made me very happy in this message. He quotes Nicholas Kabasilos, who's the author of The Life in Christ, and he says, when men have a longing so great that it surpasses human nature, and eagerly desire and are able to accomplish things

beyond human thought, it is the bridegroom that's capitalized. It is the bridegroom that's capitalized. It is the bridegroom who has smitten them with this longing. It is he who has sent a ray of his beauty into their eyes. The greatness of the wound already shows the arrow which has struck home. The longing indicates who has inflicted the wound. So what does this mean? If beauty wounds us, if beauty makes us long for heaven, if beauty is a lens through which we're supposed to see God, then beauty is an icon, because this is what an icon is.

An icon is something visible that helps us to move, to transcend to that which is invisible. To encounter God through the means that we have here on earth. But this is the problem is that if beauty is an icon, it's always an icon. So when our world tries to grasp at beauty, they're turning the icon into an idol. They're falling into idolatry. They're stopping short of what true beauty is. A lot of the saints talk about how when we sin, we're not sinning because our desire is too great. We're sinning because our desire is too little. We're settling for that which is not going to fulfill us

because we're so desperate to fill that longing now that we don't want to wait for what the actual fulfillment is going to be. But idolatry isn't our only response to beauty. Because I think as good Christians, often what we do is we run from it. We close our hearts to it. Because we're uncomfortable with desire, we're uncomfortable with longing. And as good Christians, good Christians, we're just afraid of the longing that beauty opens up in us.

We're afraid to have our hearts cracked open in that way. So what happens when we close our heart to beauty? What happens when we're running away from the icon? We don't fall into idolatry, but we fall into what's possibly the greatest heresy in the East, which is iconoclasm. We throw out the icon. We take this gift that God has given us to be able to see him, and we reject it because we're afraid

of what we will do with that gift. Cardinal Ratzinger talks about this concept of beauty being an icon. He's talking about Pavel Evdokimov, who, yeah, well, I'll get to that. But Ratzinger says, "'An icon does not simply reproduce what can be perceived by the senses,

but rather it presupposes, as Evdokimov says, a fasting of sight. Inner perception must free itself from the impression of the merely sensible, and in prayer and ascetical effort, acquire a new and deeper capacity to see, to perform the passage from what is merely external to the profundity of reality in such a way that the artist can see what the senses as such do not see and what actually appears in what can be perceived. The splendor of the glory of God. The glory of God shining on the face of Christ. This is a really important point because I would not want to be mistaken here.

I wouldn't want all of you to think that I'm speaking of beauty merely as an aesthetical reality I'm speaking of beauty merely as an aesthetical reality because it's not merely aesthetical. The aesthetics, that visible beauty, the beauty that we can sense with our five senses with our five senses, is also an icon. And it's a beauty that Christ surpasses, just as his peace is a peace that surpasses understanding. We have this beautiful line that always pierces my heart in our

Byzantine prayers where we put these words into the mouth of the Theotokos, the Virgin Mary. That as she's looking up at the cross, she says, Alas, O light of my eyes, where has your beauty gone? And of course we don't think that Christ is not beautiful even on the cross, but he's bloodied, he's beaten. He's disfigured. And his beauty on the cross is a beauty that goes so much deeper than aesthetics. Brotsinger talks about this, the icon of the crucified Christ.

And he says, this icon frees us from the deception. This deception he's talking about is this deception that that beauty is not reality, that it's vain to seek or love truth. Because this is a deception that the world tries to give us. He says the icon of the crucified Christ sets us free from this deception. However, it imposes a condition that we let ourselves be wounded by Him and that we believe in the love

who can risk setting aside his external beauty to proclaim in this way the truth of the beautiful. in this way, the truth of the beautiful. Again, going back to that that piece from Evdokimov, this is what Ratzinger is talking about when he says, a new and deeper capacity to see in such a way that the artist can see what the senses as such do not see, such a way that the artist can see what the senses as such do not see, the splendor of the glory of God.

The aesthetical beauty creates in us a capacity to see a truer beauty, a deeper beauty, a more fulfilling beauty. when it's over, leaves us with this longing for more. The beauty of the friend that we have to end the Zoom call with leaves us with an ache for more. And I don't want you to be afraid of that longing or that ache, because ordered correctly, ordered towards Christ, that longing is what will get you to heaven. Because that longing is what will give you the courage to make the sacrifices necessary to get to heaven, to get to the place where that longing will be fulfilled.

I'll end with the end of Ratzinger's message. Is there anyone who does not know Dostoevsky's often quoted sentence, the beautiful will save us? However, people usually forget that Dostoevsky is referring here to the redeeming beauty of Christ. We must learn to see him. If we know him, not only in words, but if we are struck by the arrow of His paradoxical beauty, then we will truly know Him, and know Him not only because we have heard others speak about Him. Then we will have found the beauty of truth, of the truth that redeems.

Nothing can bring us into close contact with the beauty of Christ himself, other than the world of beauty created by faith and light that shines out from the faces of the saints, through whom his own light becomes visible. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of this day. Thank you for the gift of beauty, the beauty that you've placed in hearts of our friends.

The beauty of children. The beauty of sunsets. The beauty of your resurrection, which is the greatest beauty of all. The resurrection of your son. Father, I ask that you grant us the graces that we need to see the beauty you've given us in creation and to move from there into a deeper vision of the beauty of your Son. Please allow the beauty we encounter to be a place of longing for you Trinity and unity with one another in heaven.

I ask all of this through the prayers of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Nathaniel, Thomas Aquinas, St. Nathaniel, St. John Chrysostom. Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and all the saints, and through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.