Jazz & the Church

"All this is one for me: the nature in which humans live, the art by which they transform it, and the liturgy where nature and art become the path to God."
The Rev. Joseph Gelineau, S.J.

 
Mortal Beauty
  
 

Here is Father J. Robert Barth, S.J., of Boston College, on "mortal beauty.""Some 25 years ago the revered and beloved Jesuit Father Pedro Arrupe, as Superior General of the Society of Jesus, spoke eloquently and movingly to a group of Jesuit artists-poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, dramatists, and film-makers gathered in Italy from all over the world. His words are as true and telling now as they were then.

Father Arrupe said:
"Today, as men seek to communicate with one another, they find that there is a gap which words cannot bridge. Youth and age, authority and dependence, priest and people, east and west, white and black, the more they try to reach out to one another, the farther apart they seem to drift. But not you. You are the fortunate ones. You speak and all listen, all understand. More than the preacher's word, it is the musician's touch that is bringing the young to God again. More than the politician, it is the folk singer who draws the races hand in hand. Heart speaks to heart in mysterious ways, and it is the artist who holds the key to the mystery. His is the catechesis not of word, but of tone and stone. He can touch the wellsprings of the human heart and release energies of the soul that the rest of the world does not suspect."

Comments Father Barth: "We need not fear 'mortal beauty,' whether in paint or stone or the notes of music. To be sure, it can be at times a 'terrible beauty,' revealing the dark side of humankind. But if it is true to who we are, as sinful but redeemed people, it can show us much more than ourselves. It can be the stained-glass window through which we see, in a single act of vision, the human artifact and the glory of the sun, the here and now and the eternal. Mortal beauty, at its best, can touch us with 'God's better beauty, grace' -- can even reveal to us 'beauty's self and beauty's giver.'" Fear not.

(Christianity and Literature, Autumn 2000)