Faith & Thought

Finding Redemption in the Eucharistic Celebration

The great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky claimed that beauty will save the world. When I first heard that idea expressed many years ago, it fascinated me. It still does. I wondered what it meant (and still do). I decided that writing a column about it might help me understand it more deeply.

Writing this series of columns has led me to reflect more and more on the beauty of art and the wonderful gift that artists can give us by creating beautiful art. The culture in which people live can have a powerful influence on them, for better or worse. If artists are writing great literature, everyone can benefit. If artists are creating great theatre, everyone can grow. If artists are creating great music, everyone can be touched.

If artists are writing great poetry, many may gain insights into the mystery of creation. If artists are making great films, they are making an especially powerful expression of beauty available to people. On every single level of being human, we coexist with other people. We coexist on the level of knowing, we coexist on the level of emotion, we coexist on the level of action, and we even coexist on the level of religion.

How much the truth and beauty of Catholicism reach the person in the pew can be influenced by who is the pope, who is the local bishop, who is the parish priest, who are the Catholics with whom the person in the pew associates, and especially what type of Catholics are the members of the person’s family. The solitary “self-made man” does not exist.

On the deepest level of living, I need others, and others need me. Think of how many lives have changed dramatically because of the technological revolution caused by computers, cell phones, and other new creations. A culture, in many ways, is telling people who they are and what it means to be a human person. We should never underestimate the power of an idea.

Reflecting on the gifts artists can offer us, I began to think of the Eucharist in relation to great works of art. I do not believe that the greatest work of human art can compare to the power and beauty of a Eucharistic celebration. The primary creative power in a Eucharist is God. The greatest work of art can imitate God’s beauty, but it cannot present God’s beauty and power the way a Eucharistic celebration can. Art created by a human being is not as great or as beautiful, or as powerful as a Eucharistic celebration.

If we think of sacraments as works of art, God is the main artist, and the community of believers participates in God’s creative act. Years ago, in the Jesuit magazine America, Andrew Greeley penned a terrific essay entitled “The Apologetics of Beauty.” He wrote the following:

“Beauty is the dimension of an object, event or person, that may under proper circumstances hint at the transcendent and even provide an opportunity for the transcendent briefly to break into our lives and illumine them. Beauty illuminates. Hence, to say that a wedding is beautiful (in this sense of the word) means that the couple’s love and the priest’s and community’s love for them are so apparent and transparent that the dazzling love of God seems to fill the church.

“To say the liturgy is beautiful means that the joy of the communal meal has so permeated the congregation that many sense that Jesus had indeed joined us at the table and is joyful with us. To say that a funeral is beautiful is to say that the congregation’s faith in the triumph of life over death is so powerful that the Lord of the resurrection seems temporarily to be amongst us, as he was with Lazarus’ mourners, promising that life is too important ever to be anything but life.

To say that a baptism is beautiful is to say that the celebration over this wondrous bundle of human life is so delirious that we sense for a moment that the One who gives life and nurture is delirious with us.”

Everything I wanted to say in this particular column, Father Greeley wrote several years ago and expressed them better than I ever could. At the beginning of his essay, Greeley suggests that the beauty of the Catholic heritage attracts people and it will not release people no matter how hard they try to escape. It is easy to criticize the Church, but if you examine Catholicism seriously, then I believe that the final judgment will be that Catholicism is a truly great religion.

This is probably a good way to end this series on beauty.


Father Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica. His new book, “The Cosmic Love Story: God and Us,” is available on Amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.