Beauty and Transformation
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“…true beauty, true spiritual beauty, can never be made artificially. There isn’t enough gold in the world to buy the cleansing, transformation, and remaking of our spirit. The price for that was already paid by the One sent to save our souls and cleanse us from our sins…Perhaps there is nothing so powerful as a testimony of a life transformed. I don’t believe it’s necessary to suffer so deeply that one’s life is crushed seemingly beyond repair, broken into a hundred pieces, before we fall to our knees and hear God’s longing for our soul. But this we do know; it certainly is an explosive doorway and being witness to God’s mercy. Pain transformed is holy space.” (Jackie Morfesis)
“While the Church is known for transfiguring the world in the Sacraments, there are also times when the Church enables us to see (despite the darkness of the world) “the world to come.” When not being transformative, the Church makes things transparent – a window into the kingdom, or makes the kingdom visible in and through this world. In Christ we begin to see everything as a gift from God, we see God being revealed through everything. This is the end of the sharp distinction between the sacred and profane. In Christ, in the Church, everything is again revealed as created by God and a means for us to encounter our Creator. In Christ we can see the goodness and holiness in each thing in creation.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)
“We were created to perceive the Beautiful, even to pursue it. This is also to say that we were created to know God and to have the capacity, by grace, to know Him.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“The God-Man came to do nothing less than to transfigure us in holiness with His gracious divine energies as the uniquely blessed persons He created us to become. The Savior called His disciples to “be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matt. 5:48) He cited the Psalms: “You are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High.” (Psalm 82:6; Jn. 10:34) While we remain human beings by nature, Christ enables us to become like Him by our personal participation in His grace. That is why theosis is an eternal process, for God’s holiness is truly infinite. Contrary to the self-centered individualism celebrated by our culture, Christ calls us to become persons united in humble love with Him, our fellow members of His Body, the Church, and our neighbors. We become more beautiful living icons of God not in self-centered isolation or by defining ourselves as enemies over against anyone else but by growing in communion with Him and all who bear His image and likeness.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters)
“…Christ in agony on the cross is the most beautiful thing in the world, because there we get to see the full, astonishing beauty of God himself, visible in the person of Christ, but then we see that beauty given. True Beauty always gives itself away, and God’s giving on the cross means that evil gets turned backward. Jesus was crucified: hands torn, body ripped apart, executed by self-important dictators at the behest of an angry mob, and that event, that total gift of God’s self, became, not the end place of hope, but it’s foundation. If God can turn that horror into the in-breaking moment of divine love, he can invade even the sorrows we’re witnessing now and wrest them to his service. That doesn’t mean they cease to be grievous, nor does it mean we ought not to resist what we believe to be wrong. But it does mean that we must not think of these circumstances as the end of love, but the place, by God’s grace, of it’s even more radical arrival.” (Sarah Clarkson)
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