Life, Demons, Truth & Beauty: A Few Quotes For A Wednesday

[ 3 minute read ]

Every single human life is precious, loved, and planned by God from the moment of conception until natural death. Sadly, though, this profound understanding is lost on many people. In this increasingly narcissistic, self-fulfilling society, the concept of dying to self, having sacrificial love, and following God’s design has become a foreign concept. - Kathy Athearn

Heaven is right beside and all around the demonic spirits, and yet they cannot enter into it. They have displaced themselves as the result of an irrevocable choice, the choice to adore and serve themselves and not God. They yearn for and hate what they can never again have - the eternal freedom of everlasting love. They have corrupted love into self worship. They cannot and will not serve anything nor anyone other than themselves. Theirs is a cautionary tale. They have communion only with their hatred toward man and their enmity toward God Whom they reject because of His love for man. The love of God is only a painful memory to the fallen spirit, and that loss of their own making torments them every moment of their existence. They have made themselves subject to and slaves of their own injustice, and that conviction causes them to seek to destroy all that is good and holy. - Anonymous 2023

(P)erhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through – then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar TO THAT VERY SAME PLACE, and in so doing will fulfil the work of all three? -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Every conclave must assess the needs of the Church and elect the shepherd who has the skills to address them. At different times in history such skills might be diplomatic or administrative, financial or evangelical. The great challenge for Francis’s successor is doctrinal assurance, to give Catholics once again the courage of their convictions, and to proclaim the apostolic faith—ever ancient, ever new—with clarity and brio. The next pope must strive to fulfill the Lord’s mandate to Peter on the eve of his Passion: “strengthen your brethren.” Twice in his letters to Timothy, St. Paul exhorts him with the primary task of every bishop: “guard the truth that has been entrusted to you.” The next pope’s task will be daunting, but he would do well, as he emerges from the Sistine Chapel, to keep first principles in mind: Protect the faith. Strengthen the brethren. And don’t make a mess. - Fr. Brian A. Graebe at First Things

Catechism of the Catholic Church 2502 | Sacred art is true and beautiful when its form corresponds to its particular vocation: evoking and glorifying, in faith and adoration, the transcendent mystery of God - the surpassing invisible beauty of truth and love visible in Christ, who "reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature," in whom "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." This spiritual beauty of God is reflected in the most holy Virgin Mother of God, the angels, and saints. Genuine sacred art draws man to adoration, to prayer, and to the love of God, Creator and Savior, the Holy One and Sanctifier.

Beauty’s greatest power cannot be found in a beautiful object, but in a beautiful life, and there is one life in particular reveals this power to its fullest extent. The Cross expresses the power of beauty by showing us the supreme goodness of human life. The one who is beauty itself emptied himself and took on all the ugliness of the world, even to the point of disfigurement. And yet this love and sacrifice manifests the greatest beauty — the beauty of Christ’s love and also his desire to see our lives become beautiful through that love. The beauty of Cross cuts through all the noise, vanity, and lust by unmasking their ephemeralness. - Dr. R. Jared Staudt at CWR