The Need for Beauty

One

Beauty as a Transcendental

In the Catholic Tradition, there’s a lot of emphasis placed on what are called the Transcendentals.

These are notions that, in some sense, apply to every real thing. That’s why they’re called transcendental, because they transcend any category and apply to everything.

The four most famous transcendental notions are being, truth, goodness, and beauty. And we believe that these notions (ideas), in a sense, completely overlap. That where you have one, the others apply too.

That’s why God, who is the Supreme Being, is also the Supreme Truth, the Supreme Good, and the Supremely Beautiful One. These aren’t different parts of God. God is All-True, All-Good, and All-Beautiful. He has created a reality that is also true, good, and beautiful.

When we understand the world, we say that our minds know the truth about it. When we desire certain things in the world and use them to fulfill ourselves on the path to heaven, then we say that our wills appreciate the goodness of the world. And when we delight in the truth and goodness of the world, then we may say that we are experiencing the world’s beauty.

So where are you finding beauty? Where do you delight in the goodness and truth of things?

Two

Beauty as Order

What is beauty?

One of the key ingredients for the experience of beauty is order. Order has a very simple meaning: it just means things being the way they’re supposed to be and doing what they’re supposed to do. That’s why, for instance, when an appliance isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do, we say it’s out of order. But when something is the way it’s supposed to be, when you see a sunset that is everything a sunset is supposed to be, or watch a bird’s graceful flight, or listen to a well-composed, well-executed piece of music – there’s a very soothing pleasure. There’s a delightful rest that says, “Yes, this is the way things are supposed to be. This is right.” 

That’s the first ingredient of beauty. And without that, no delight, no pleasure, is really innocent or healthy.

So are you taking delight in things that are the way they’re supposed to be? Are you taking delight in order?

Three

Beauty as Surprise 

There’s a second ingredient in beauty, and it’s one you might not have expected. It’s the ingredient of surprise.

Yes. God has designed us to delight in what is surprising, which is just our response to what we don’t find obvious, what we didn’t expect.

Beauty happens not just when we experience order, but when we experience order we never expected to see or had forgotten about. It’s when the plot twist of a book or movie completely surprises us and we catch our breath because we never expected that anything could be so right. It’s when your teenage kid tells you they love you. It’s when you remember that God loves you, that He’s forgiven you, and that everything is going to be all right. You think, “This is too much. It’s so much better than I had any right to expect. I can’t believe how good it is.”

Think of when your kid took his first step. That’s just order, it’s just something happening the way it’s supposed to happen. After all, people are bipeds. They’re supposed to walk. But somehow, you just can’t believe it. You just didn’t realize it would make you so happy. You might tear up. Because, somehow, it’s just so surprising. The goodness of it catches you off guard. And that’s what makes it one of the most beautiful moments of your life.

Four

Beauty and Free Time

We were made for the transcendentals. We were made for truth. That’s why God gave us a mind. And we were made for goodness. That’s why God gave us our wills. But we were also made for beauty. And that’s why God gave us emotions and the capacity for delight.

He wants us to delight in the fusion of order and surprise. He wants us to, every day if possible, be astonished at how right things are. And because we are human beings, the normal way for us to experience beauty is to make use of sensory images. To find beautiful sights for our eyes, beautiful sounds for our ears, to savor beautiful food with our tongues and noses, to read things that fill our imaginations with beauty, and even to use our hands to make beauty of our own.

This is the challenge of free time, but what a great challenge it is! It’s the challenge of hunting for beauty. Hunting for the peace and the rush of order and surprise. And the more you do it, the better you get. And the more delightful your life becomes.

Five

The God of Beauty 

Beauty is the joining of order and surprise, and it makes sense that this would fulfill us as human beings.

Order is the sign of intelligence. It corresponds to our minds. When our minds understand things, they understand what they are, and how they should work, which is order.

Surprise is the part of beauty that fits with our freedom. Because we are free, we know things don’t have to be the way they are. Which is why we can be surprised that they are actually so good. But of course, the world isn’t beautiful because we’re intelligent and free. The world is orderly and surprising because God is intelligent and free. The beauty of reality conforms to the way we are because the beauty of reality first expresses who God is.

So the pursuit of beauty, which is exactly what we’re supposed to be pursuing in our free time, is meant to be a journey from delight in created goodness towards the delight in the uncreated goodness, which is heaven.

There we will see God, who is perfect order, the God who is perfectly, infinitely right. There we will see God, and we’ll never, ever, get over the joyful surprise.

As G.K. Chesterton says, “It was the most beautiful thing in the world; perhaps the only really beautiful thing in the world. It was astonishment which was lost in Eden and will return with the Beatific Vision, in astonishment so strong that it will last forever.