The year is 987 and the Pagan prince Vladimir of Kiev has sent his emissaries to the Hagia Sophia, the Cathedral of the Greek Patriarch, to witness the Divine Liturgy of the so called “Christians” who claim that their god is the only true God. As we contemplate the transformative power of a beautiful liturgy, the following quotation from Vladimir’s emissaries should give us pause.
“Then we went to Constantinople, and the Greeks (including the emperor himself) led us to the edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We only know that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty.”
A few things are worth noting here. Notice that their experience of heaven is the experience of beauty. Beauty isn’t an afterthought. It is the way that God makes himself known. Second, their experience of heaven is not the product of elements that they can describe. It isn’t just the music, or just the architecture, or just the vestments. Rather, it is that all of them contribute to a moment of perfect seeing that the Living God who is beauty, has made Himself present and that the heart is “happily wounded”, as Pope Benedict XVI often said, just because I am near. And the question we as parishioners often neglect to ask ourselves is, “is that what we mean when we tell Father on a Sunday that the Mass we just attended was a beautiful Mass?” The answer is determined by one’s response to the following questions: What is beauty? What is the experience of beauty like? How do I know that I have been to a beautiful Mass?
St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae infers that beauty is what the Scholastic theologians called a transcendental. A transcendental is one of four inseparable characteristics that all existing things receive directly from God. These characteristics are: that a thing is one, in that it really does exist, true, in that a thing’s existence can be known by reasonable minds, good, in that it does the thing that God intends for its existence, and beautiful, in that, by its radiance, I know the other characteristics about it immediately. Here’s a test case. Imagine a pastor is building a new Church and has commissioned a painting of the Crucifixion to place behind the altar. When the painting is unveiled, the pastor is surprised to fi nd that the blood and water which usually flows from his side has been painted by the artist as coffee and orange juice. Let’s go a step further and say that the painting is a masterwork in technique, museum quality. Is it beautiful? Absolutely not. The transcendentals can never be separated from each other. It is one? Yes. It exists. Does it tell me the truth about what will happen on the altar? No. Does it speak to God’s goodness or what I should aspire to? No. Then it can’t be beautiful. It can be “well-done”. But not beautiful. And this concept is made even easier when we reflect honestly that some of us have dated men and women we have perceived as beautiful, but were not good and did not tell us the truth. Beauty, it seems, cannot be “in the eye of the beholder” or just our “own opinion”. It has a serious job to do.
Simple enough. Beauty is a radiant object, sound, or moment that tells me about the truth and goodness of that thing. But think back to your last experience of something beautiful. Beautiful things make us stop and see, not reason, analyze, or do something, see. When I am blown away by a sunset, music, or my wife during a candlelit dinner, it is like being shot with an arrow that reaches the core of my being. It makes us stop because we are “wounded” by the object of beauty. We experience that object as though it calls us to see it, to know its truth and goodness, to be in communion with it or what it points to. When I see the sunset after a perfect day at the beach, I am wounded by that peace that can only come from waves lapping upon the shore, and desire to be one with it. Beauty calls us beyond ourselves to be one with a God who is the supreme source of all beauty, truth, and goodness. But what about Mass?
Well, if we know that beauty is never separate from truth and goodness, and so, not “in the eye of the beholder”, and if we know that its job is to wound me so that I desire to be in union with its source, God, then the question about Mass becomes easy. Did the elements of Mass tell the truth about what the Church believes is happening at Mass? Did those elements point me to God’s goodness, in that he freely gives me His body, blood, soul, and divinity? Then it was a beautiful Mass. If not, it wasn’t, even if it felt nice.
Suppose Father comes out of the sacristy wearing vestments that are made of fabric with random badly drawn children. These do not speak to the radiance of Christ’s kingship in the Mass. How do I even know what liturgical season we are in? No truth has been told by Father’s choice of vestments. They are not beautiful. Suppose the musicians play three songs for Communion with expert musicianship, but never give the congregation time to reflect on the great mystery they receive during communion. There is noise from start to finish. How can the assembly contemplate God’s goodness and mercy? How will it develop silent thankfulness? This is not a beautiful Mass. Suppose that Father makes light of the sprinkling rite, a moment where we are supposed to be aware of our own sin and the abundance of God’s mercy through our Baptism. Instead, Father chuckles and says something like “ok everyone. Time to do some soaking” and proceeds to joke with the people he is sprinkling. His actions have not told the truth that by his priestly authority, he remits the punishment due to any venial sins. It was not a beautiful Mass.
When we leave Mass, the experience of beauty should leave us with the strong impression that something more important than ourselves happened on the altar. When we describe every Mass that makes us feel warm fuzzies as “beautifully done” we lose the richness of what the Roman tradition intends. The Church intends for us to be so wounded by beauty, that we see and desire communion with the crucified and resurrected Lord who has generously come to meet us. Every Mass should leave us with the words of Vladimir’s emissaries: “ We only know that God dwells there among men…For we cannot forget that beauty.
Ruben Gilbert is Associate Director of the Office of Divine Worship for the Diocese of San Bernardino.