Howard Nemerov, "The Loon's Cry"

"... For signatures
In all things are, which leave us not alone
Even in the thought of death, and may by arts
Contemplative be found and named again."

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Theological Reflection on the Beautiful

"In a world without beauty - even if people cannot dispense with the word and constantly have it on the tip of their tongues in order to abuse it - in a world which is perhaps not wholly without beauty, but which can no longer see it or reckon with it: in such a world the good also loses its attractiveness, the self-evident of why it must be carried out. Man stands before the good and asks himself why it must be done and not rather its alternative evil... In a world that no longer has enough confidence in itself to affirm the beautiful, the proofs of the truth have lost their cogency."

Hans Urs Von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: I Seeing the Form (Ignatius Press, p. 19)

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