John O’Donohue (1956-2008) was an Irish philosopher, poet, and priest. After being ordained in the Catholic Church, O’Donohue served as a priest for roughly seven years before pursuing a doctorate in philosophical theology at the University of Tübingen. Balancing his post-doctoral work with his priestly duties, he also became an accomplished poet and speaker, leaving the priesthood in 2000 to begin teaching and speaking in the United States. O’Donohue’s eclectic interests, backed by his deep passion for mysticism, led him to write about the soul, spirituality, and beauty. In Beauty, he sets aside explicit philosophical analysis for a defense of beauty based upon our own intuitive desire for it. O’Donohue argues that though we might ignore it, we long for real beauty throughout our lives, because it makes us whole.

A common adage in our day is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is usually taken to mean that beauty is just a person’s taste, whatever they like or regard as beautiful. The past 60-80 years have witnessed a revolution in traditional standards of beauty, especially in the arts. Commitment to a standard of beauty as objective has waned to the point of virtual non-existence. Contrary to popular opinion, however, the beautiful does exist, and it is not a fabrication of the human mind.

Previously, cultures recognized the transcendental character of beauty. Beauty summons us, calling us out of ourselves into a greater and wider reality. In ancient Greece, the word for beauty was linked to the verb for calling. To see the beautiful was an encounter with something beyond man that makes us whole. The universe was considered to be intelligible, well ordered, and grander than we realize. Of course, always seeing what is beautiful is not easy. Too often we are turned inward by our own desires, thoughts, and fears. When we cut ourselves off from the world around us, we become hardened in our own perspective, unable to appreciate or listen to its beauty. 

Yet, we still long for the beautiful. In every cry for justice is an image, a vision of what things ought to look like. The beautiful still calls us. To see it requires, at the very least, a trained habit of attention. Seeing is not merely an act of the eye, it is an act of the soul that focuses on some things and neglects others. Our attentiveness is not solely a matter of willpower but an act of humility, a willingness to see the world around us anew. We begin to see things on their own terms, as ends in themselves—not means to our own. Rather than viewing the world outside us as an obstacle to our goals, we begin to cultivate a sense of reverence for the grand order of things. Humbly recognizing our own finite grasp on the world enables us to appreciate and see it afresh, to commune with the beautiful around us.

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Because beauty is not just subjective preference, experiences of it cannot be fabricated. We receive beauty from the ordered world as a gift. Of course, we do create and make wonderful things in the world that others call beautiful. We talk freely about beautifying ourselves, our homes, and our environment. Yet making beautiful things does not entail having that transcendent experience of beauty with which we are familiar.

Truly encountering beauty is outside of our control. There is something mystical about these encounters that cannot be manufactured. When we call something beautiful, we never trap or contain beauty within the particular beautiful object. Though we may point to specific details—the redness of a sunset, the breeze passing through a garden, the smile of a loved one—we never say that beauty simply is those physical details. Beauty is somehow present in those physical things and beyond them entirely. It highlights and adorns them without being reduced to them.

In light of this truth about the transcendent nature of beauty, older practices and religious rituals can be re-understood as purposeful acts of attentiveness to our ordered world. The sacraments and ceremonies of past days were not concerned with the experiences that often resulted from them, but rather the transcendent order that lay beyond the grasp of man. Beauty as a transcendental ideal makes it mystical in one sense, but accessible in another. Some well-known correlates of beauty have stood the test of time. A commitment to symmetry, balance, perfection, and integrity reflects an understanding of beauty that distinguishes it from ugliness. Seeking these aspects of beauty deepens our disposition towards the beauty of the world around us.

It is easy to view things in black and white terms. Us versus them, mind versus body, inner self versus outer self. Our modern society replaces the unexplained with the easily controlled. Enchantment with the grandeur of the cosmos is replaced with mastery over our portion of the universe. But encounters with beauty make the easy dichotomies and illusions of control and independence fade away. In being called out of ourselves, we recognize our interdependence with the world. Startlingly, we also recognize those places where we are at the mercy of the natural order.

This reconfigures, amongst other things, our understanding of selfhood. Rather than imagining a chasm between the self and everything else, beauty helps us recognize the kinships we have with everything around us. These kinships are part of what composes our identity. We see this especially in one’s personal possessions. The books, clothes, music, and other things we enjoy reflect and reinforce our own identity.

These kinships are connected to our primary kinship with the divine. To be human is to be made in the image of God, reflecting His creativity and love for the world. In His love, we are able to love and create and dwell in harmony with the world He has made. Beauty is an essential component of our humanness. It draws us out of our fallen selves to become more like the selves God intended. Through the beautiful, we recognize our interdependence with the world, as well as our responsibility to beautify it.

It seems increasingly easy to become bitter and angry at the world around us. We are inundated with local and now global examples of evil, loss, and suffering. Within our own personal lives, each of us will face suffering that defies reason and wilts our joy. Wounds emerge in our being that close us off and instill rigid habits of complacency. The irony of suffering is that we often become our own victims, evildoers unto ourselves. We harden our hearts, become our own taskmasters, and set about caging our freedom for a thin veil of security.

Undoubtedly, it is natural to retreat from the world when it wounds us. But in the aftermath of this retreat, the illusion crops up that in order to prevent other such events, we can merely cut off any threats and attachments that leave us vulnerable. Cloistering ourselves according to this delusion, we do not actually process our pain, but leave the wound to fester. Opposed to this easy illusion is the fact that true resilience is not the armor we put on to keep everything out, but the steady and unmoving posture of the soul. To develop our own strength of soul, we must recognize our wounds, and rehabilitate our love for what is good.

To properly nourish our souls does not mean thinking positive thoughts or avoiding negative ones. Even in the deepest wounds, unforeseen goods that we could not expect appear before us. Suffering and evil themselves are ugly. But beauty can resolve even notes of discord into grander harmonies. When wounded by evil, we can either multiply our privations, or seek to turn loss into different gains. Continually habituating ourselves to what is beautiful is essential to our healing. Again, this is not a coverup for the reality of true loss. Every loss, every evil suffered is unique and cannot be ignored. Only by fully attending our wounds can we grow and heal from them. Even scarred limbs tell stories of regeneration, and even discord can be transfigured into something beautiful.

Because beauty refines our sense of the transcendent, it also points forward to the life that awaits us beyond death. Death often presents itself simply as the end of all things. We think we are solely physical creatures, so when the body breaks down, everything we are ceases as well. To see death as solely physical reinforces a hopelessness in our hearts. We long for life, and life to the fullest. When we witness the body of a loved one who has passed on, we are filled with sorrow at the cold stillness that claims him.

Moreover, it is hard to understand how an entire person—with their thoughts, feelings, memories, and experiences—can be no more. Each person is a world unto himself, complete with relationships, deeds, and experiences that are unique to him. A world dies whenever someone passes. The sense of our own mortality in the face of death is disheartening. Coupled with the weight of grief over those lost, this can be debilitating.

Against the intuitive assumption of the nothingness that follows death, our experiences of beauty suggest there is more to come. When we encounter the transcendent through the beautiful, it seems to affirm that there is more to life than we can see. Death, which seemed unassailable and final, may merely be the gateway to a life currently invisible to us. Instead of considering ourselves as physical beings, we consider ourselves to be within a body without being limited to it. Our encounters with the beautiful reaffirm the sense of the soul that is our deepest self. Contrary to the hopelessness that impresses upon us when we are faced with death, encountering the beautiful reaffirms that our life will be transfigured beyond the veil of death.

The majesty, symmetry, and harmony that beauty bestows reflect a creative intelligence that formed the world. Numerous religious traditions have developed their own responses to this divine maker. Every time we encounter beauty—be it in religious ritual or everyday circumstances—we are encountering the divine. As far back as Plato, beauty was recognized as an essential aspect of God. All good things are united in the beauty of Him who made all things.

Though it is overlooked and neglected in many religious circles today, to behold the beautiful is the crux of holiness. The beautiful and the holy cohere in the character of the divine, which runs through every human being. But what do we really mean by beautiful and holy? These terms are often abstract and vague. What anchors them in reality is the recognition that the divine is not a force, but a person. Christianity has been especially emphatic about communion with the divine persons of the Trinity. Every time we behold beauty. we are really coming to behold the love of God, worked out in creation.

Recognizing this truth prompts the further recognition that our minds, hearts, and bodies are ordered after the beauty of God. To pursue and seek Him, we must do so with all that we are. It requires a transformation of our being to see the way the divine moves through this world. As we see it, it is like we are viewing a great transfiguration of the world that reveals the fulfillment that comes from the divine. In some ways, this transfiguration mimics that of Jesus in the Gospel. What is beautiful manifests the grandeur and majesty of the divine before our eyes. Understood in this way, pursuing beauty is a religious endeavor by which we come to see the harmonious order woven through everything.

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