Or why this ...

... should inspire us and not repulse us.

Several events in my spiritual journey provided hints that eventually there would be a severe adjustment in course that would point me directly towards Rome. I was raised Catholic. We irregularly attended mass in a modern but not heinously unattractive church. It was a far cry from the cathedrals of Europe though. My upbringing saw a Catholicism somewhat divided from but not completely devoid of the beautiful. I want to touch on four seemingly minor events in my journey away from the faith and back towards it where beauty was a key factor in unlocking the truth and desire to know more about Him and that eventually led me back to His Church.

Throughout college and immediately following my college years I spent time in numerous Baptist, charismatic and non-denominational churches. In most cases the churches I was attending were stark and beauty was either absent altogether or nominally present. The focus was scripture study, prayer and fellowship (All good things mind you) ...

The first "beauty event" that hinted that my walk would head back home to Rome was when I started attending church with the woman that would become my wife. She had been attending a small charismatic Episcopal church. Upon going to church with her two things hit me. The church was pretty and the liturgy was a careful romance crafted about the story of the Passion of our Lord. It invoked a swell of memories from my youth about the choir, stained glass, the pipe organ and the reverence of the mass. It was something I hadn't seen in my years as a Protestant and I missed that most intensely beautiful aspect of worship. There was something to this liturgy thing and I couldn't quite put a finger on it.

My second hint was at our wedding. My wife and I both received a special gift from God on that day and it wasn't just the sacrament of marriage. Both of us can recall in stunning detail specific aspects about the golden glow that occupied the church that morning. I can still see the gleam off her eyes. I can feel the warmth of the morning sun. All of it was heightened by music and a fervent call to worship. The environment around us elevated our wedding and I will never forget how beautiful it was ... The aspects of beauty present in our wedding highlighted the reality that is the sacrament of marriage. God touched us on that day in a very special way and He still does to this day through our marriage ... (the real journey began in the months following our marriage)

The third hint came after my wife and I had come to the conclusion that we needed to consider the claims of the Catholic Church. One morning I decided to take a detour on the way to the church we had been attending and ended up at a local Catholic church in an older part of town. We arrived just as mass was beginning and we were ushered up to the front row with our 18 month old son. The music was gorgeous and the church had all of those "things" that I had been told were going to come between me and God. Stained glass. Statues. Candles. A Mary icon. None of them detracted from our ability to enjoy mass. In fact, they were very helpful.

Shortly afterwards we left our other church and started to pursue fully the call Christ had on us to return to His Church. The final aspect of the beautiful that touched me on my way back to Rome was the Easter Vigil that my wife and I were received into the Church.

Since our conversion, I have read snippets from some who want to dismiss all converts to Rome as if their decision pivoted entirely on the experiential aspect of beauty itself. The smells and bells are not what bring people home. It is the reality of the Incarnation, the mystery that is hinted at every time someone crafts a beautiful work of art to and for the glory of Christ Himself that brings us home. The awe-inspiring works of art within the halls of the great cathedrals inspire and the remind us that there is something greater than us. Pope John Paul II in his Letter to Artists mentions that some of the earliest forms of art were depictions of passages from Sacred Scripture and that "The 'beautiful' was thus wedded to the 'true', so that through art too souls might be lifted up from the world of the senses to the eternal."

Beauty is a perfectly valid reason because it is certainly not the only reason I returned to Rome. It offered mere hints that were later confirmed by strong stances in the area of morality and by strong scriptural and historical evidence in support of Catholicism that led me home. My joyous return to Rome was a process that took about 4 years. Beauty was the nudge. Truth was the reason.

Some other gems from Pope John Paul II's Letter to Artists

This prime epiphany of “God who is Mystery” is both an encouragement and a challenge to Christians, also at the level of artistic creativity. From it has come a flowering of beauty which has drawn its sap precisely from the mystery of the Incarnation. In becoming man, the Son of God has introduced into human history all the evangelical wealth of the true and the good, and with this he has also unveiled a new dimension of beauty, of which the Gospel message is filled to the brim. Sacred Scripture has thus become a sort of “immense vocabulary” (Paul Claudel) and “iconographic atlas” (Marc Chagall), from which both Christian culture and art have drawn.

Saint Bonaventure comments: “In things of beauty, he contemplated the One who is supremely beautiful, and, led by the footprints he found in creatures, he followed the Beloved everywhere”

It remains true, however, that because of its central doctrine of the Incarnation of the Word of God, Christianity offers artists a horizon especially rich in inspiration. What an impoverishment it would be for art to abandon the inexhaustible mine of the Gospel!

Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savour life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine could express in incomparable terms: “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you!”.