Beauty

What kind of God are You, my Lord?

Those who know You least say You are ugly,

a moral monster, an insufferable tyrant.

Those who know You best long to dwell in Your house

to behold Your beauty all the days of their lives.

Who is fit to teach me—

Those who know You least or

Those who know You best?

Who is fit to teach me?

You are, O Lord, for who knows You better

than You know Yourself?

You who are worshiped for Your beauty,

show me Your beauty that I may worship You better.

       

Is Your beauty

A snow-capped mountain—distant, cold, and severe?

A flower—fading and easily crushed?

A haunting aria—filling the soul with longing it cannot quite satisfy?

Surely these are but faint echoes of Your beauty,

The sound of a song heard dimly in the distance,

Or shadows cast by Your great light down into our darkened world.

An earthly melody may move a heart of flesh,

But Your beauty turns a heart of stone into living flesh.

So what is Your beauty, Lord?

What is more beautiful than Love?

Love that plans to surprise the ugly beloved with love

Love that sacrifices its life for the beloved

Love that gives the whole self to the beloved.

The love of the Father; the love of the Son; the love of the Spirit—

The eternal Love of the Triune God.

If You are a moral monster, O my God,

Why does meditating on Your beauty fill my heart with warmth

And fit me for loving my neighbor?

WHO?

Who was that eternal Image in Your mind, O my God,

        the image according to which You fashioned

my body and my soul?

Was I that image, or was it my neighbor?

Was there a separate image in Your mind

        for every human being to be born?

We are all different one from another,

and yet we are all the same,

for we bear one Image, the Image of God,

Since there is but one God,

we must be fashioned according to one Image.

Scripture says that Your beloved, eternal Son

        is the Image of the invisible God.

By Creation we were stamped with one Image.

Through History that Image is differentiated into many images.

By Redemption the many images shall be lifted

        to the closest possible resemblance to the eternal Image.

And yet they shall retain their differences.

O wondrous plan!

The plan of an infinite Mind,

the plan of an dying Love,

the plan of an indwelling Power.

the plan of the triune God.

How?

O my God, You created me because of Your love.

You boast of an everlasting love for Your own people,

a love that has neither beginning nor end,

a love that exists eternally in the unchangeable I AM.

How, O Lord, did You love me before I came to be?

I was nothing before my mother conceived me in her womb.

Is not the love of nothing an empty, shapeless love?

No, for Your love is a shaping love.

The ancients tell of a sculptor, Pygmalion, who carved a woman out of ivory and then fell in love with his creation. Day after day, he gazed with futile longing at her beauty, until at last the goddess Venus took pity on him, and when he kissed the statue’s lifeless form, she began to live.

From what source did the statue derive her beauty? Was she not first in Pygmalion’s mind before his hand gave her form? Therefore, he loved her image in his mind before he loved her shape in ivory. Last of all, love brought her life.

And so, O Lord, in the eternal time before time,

You loved the Image in Your mind.

First, Your made time and the world in order to have a place

where You might put the creature that You imagined.

Then You fashioned flesh and blood and bone, and last of all,

You loved the work of Your hands into life.

Though this work of Yours was very good,

yet You were not contented with it.

The thing that was very good

must become better.

The image to whom You gave life

        must come to have a higher life.

And so, out of Your creation called Time,

You made something new.

You made something called History that through its passages,

You might perfect the image of the Image in Your mind.

Thus, the creature You loved into life in the Garden

        is loved into eternal life through the death of Your Image.

Why?

Why, O Lord, did You make us?

Was there an emptiness in You

that You sought to fill by creating what You lacked?

Such a thing could never be,

for how can emptiness fill itself?

Did Your Being need other beings

        to fill up the measure of Your Being?

Is it not folly to imagine that You could increase Yourself

by adding to Yourself creatures

that were nothing apart from You?

           

Omnipotent Creator of all,

did you possess such an excess of energy

that You were not able to contain it?

Were You forced by Your fullness

to overflow into some other vessel,

a vessel of your own making,

a world fashioned from Your overabundance of being?

Surely, You have power over Your power.

If any being in the universe is capable of self-control,

without a doubt, it must be You.

Why then did You make us,

if You had no emptiness that we might fill,

if You were not bursting with unstoppable energy?

If You were not forced to create, then You simply chose to do so.

What is Your choice, but the action of Your will?

What is Your will, but the expression of Your desire?

What is Your desire, but the direction of Your love?

Therefore, You made us because of love.

Love at its best may give to the needy,

but it does not spring from the need of the Giver.

Creating love is an exercise of Your will,

not an overflow of Your substance.

But who or what was loved

in that time before time began,

and why?