# The Meaning & Purpose of Beauty (Part 2)

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 28 Jun 2026, 33 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72662038/the_meaning_purpose_of_beauty_part_2.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Matthew PATRIISIC,
[0:02] Speaker 1: senior director of the Word on Fire Institute and the
[0:04] Speaker 1: host of the Word on Fire Show.
[0:06] Speaker 2: Thank you, as.
[0:06] Speaker 1: Always for joining us Today. We're bringing you the second
[0:09] Speaker 1: half of an hour long conversation between doctor Todd Warner
[0:12] Speaker 1: and Bishop Robert Baron on the transcendental of beauty. Doctor
[0:16] Speaker 1: Todd is the editor in chief of Evangelization and Culture,
[0:19] Speaker 1: our journal at the Word on Fire Institute. He also
[0:22] Speaker 1: hosts the Evangelization and Culture podcast. Here to Discuss Beauty
[0:26] Speaker 1: with Doctor Todd Warner is Bishop Robert Baron.
[0:38] Speaker 3: Segment two, the Deformation of Beauty. French Catholic novelist George
[0:43] Speaker 3: Bernardo cautioned, quote, because you have not lived your faith,
[0:47] Speaker 3: your faith is no longer alive. It has become abstract.
[0:50] Speaker 3: It is, as it were, disincarnate. Perhaps we will discover
[0:54] Speaker 3: in this disincarnation of the word the true cause of
[0:57] Speaker 3: our misfortunes. Close quote Bishop Baron, the disincarnation of the Word.
[1:02] Speaker 3: I just love that notion of the disincarnation of the word.
[1:06] Speaker 3: It's just frightening to me. That invariably leads to the deformation.
[1:09] Speaker 2: Of the true the good and the beautiful.
[1:11] Speaker 3: So what is it about postmodernity that attempts to take
[1:14] Speaker 3: the ugly in art or fashion and deem it beautiful.
[1:17] Speaker 3: It's not seeing the beautiful in the profane, but it
[1:20] Speaker 3: seems like it's deliberately attempting to debase or profinize, if
[1:24] Speaker 3: you will, the beautiful.
[1:26] Speaker 2: Is this a devilish plot of deformation?
[1:30] Speaker 4: You don't ask superficial questions. That's a really searching question,
[1:36] Speaker 4: because there, yes, in the post modern you know, think
[1:40] Speaker 4: of the kind of brutalist architecture. To me, is the
[1:43] Speaker 4: best example of that. I'll tell you this the a
[1:46] Speaker 4: couple of days ago, as we record this, I was
[1:48] Speaker 4: in Washington and I was staying at a hotel in
[1:50] Speaker 4: the LanFan Plaza area, which I never really stayed in before.
[1:54] Speaker 4: It's just off the mall a little bit, but it's
[1:57] Speaker 4: in this awful concrete jungle. Jungle is too high praise.
[2:02] Speaker 4: It's like in a concrete prison. All the buildings are
[2:06] Speaker 4: the worst kind of brutalist bunker esque almost right right,
[2:10] Speaker 4: like you're in a highway overpasser, you're in a prison
[2:13] Speaker 4: yard and devoid of decoration, like on purpose, we're going
[2:18] Speaker 4: to make it as kind of brutally simple and unrelievedly
[2:22] Speaker 4: drab as possible.
[2:25] Speaker 5: So the question, which is a searching one, is where
[2:28] Speaker 5: did that come from? I mean, I get in the
[2:32] Speaker 5: history of art, there's always action reaction. It always happens,
[2:35] Speaker 5: you know.
[2:36] Speaker 4: So let's say when the Baroke becomes the Rococo and
[2:39] Speaker 4: we get this wildly over the top, hyper decorated sort
[2:43] Speaker 4: of form.
[2:44] Speaker 5: Of course, you're going to get a reaction against that,
[2:47] Speaker 5: the move towards the.
[2:48] Speaker 4: Simple and the clear, and you know they got Frank
[2:53] Speaker 4: Lloyd right, you know, architecture imitating the planes of the
[2:57] Speaker 4: Midwest and all that. I get that, I mean, I
[3:00] Speaker 4: get that. But your again, your question is getting at
[3:03] Speaker 4: a deeper point. Was there almost like a like an animus.
[3:08] Speaker 5: Against the beautiful?
[3:09] Speaker 4: We want to de beautify, right, we want to uglify
[3:14] Speaker 4: the architecture.
[3:15] Speaker 5: Now how do you do it?
[3:16] Speaker 4: Well, one thing is you get rid of like symmetry
[3:18] Speaker 4: and take the three things. You get rid of integritas,
[3:21] Speaker 4: you get rid of consonanci and claritas. I won't get
[3:24] Speaker 4: I don't want to get too deeply in trouble by
[3:26] Speaker 4: naming particular buildings.
[3:27] Speaker 2: But sure, what I think of about.
[3:30] Speaker 4: See, I love contoin buildings. One of my favorite things
[3:33] Speaker 4: to look at is a beautiful building.
[3:35] Speaker 5: Right, But some buildings.
[3:37] Speaker 4: You look at and they they're depressing because they don't
[3:41] Speaker 4: have those qualities. They're brutal, literally, right, they and they
[3:48] Speaker 4: brutalize the viewer. They disharmonize what's in you, because the
[3:56] Speaker 4: psychological value of the beautiful is that it brings you.
[3:59] Speaker 5: Into a harmony.
[4:00] Speaker 4: Right, Why do we It's very interesting, why do we
[4:05] Speaker 4: feel better in certain buildings?
[4:06] Speaker 5: Yeah?
[4:07] Speaker 4: Why do we as we approach them, as we enter them?
[4:12] Speaker 4: And why does some buildings make us very uneasy? They
[4:16] Speaker 4: make us feel less alive, they make us feel anxious. Well,
[4:20] Speaker 4: there's a reason for that, you know they can is
[4:24] Speaker 4: their lack of those beautiful elements. So is there something
[4:29] Speaker 4: perverse that happened that got into our consciousness culturally and
[4:36] Speaker 4: led to this kind of de beautification I've talked about
[4:39] Speaker 4: near as I was coming of age, the dumbing down
[4:41] Speaker 4: of the faith, the truth being, but also the uglification
[4:44] Speaker 4: of the faith. The church is built in my time,
[4:49] Speaker 4: they were the opposite of Notre Dame, Right, they were
[4:51] Speaker 4: the opposite of Saint Peter's. They're the opposite of San Chapelle.
[4:55] Speaker 4: It's like that there was an attempt to de beautify,
[4:58] Speaker 4: to dedecorate the churches. I don't know if that'd be
[5:02] Speaker 4: talked for another seminar for us to go into, Like
[5:06] Speaker 4: was there almost a perversity of spirit.
[5:08] Speaker 3: It's interesting recently last summer actually I was down at
[5:11] Speaker 3: Notre Dame and uh, Notre Dame. Sorry, we got to
[5:16] Speaker 3: use our Notre Dame, and and and listening to because
[5:21] Speaker 3: of a child of mine, and listening to the architectural
[5:24] Speaker 3: program they're talking about, and and they were so much
[5:27] Speaker 3: about the notion that basically designing something purely for function,
[5:33] Speaker 3: designing something with with disregard, if not a fashionable, fashionable
[5:38] Speaker 3: disregard for the aesthetically pleasing it is. It is dead
[5:42] Speaker 3: and gone as soon as the paint dries, as soon
[5:45] Speaker 3: as the concrete hardens, and so on. And yet and
[5:48] Speaker 3: it's also something. It's it's to something, it's deadening to
[5:50] Speaker 3: the soul, like you just mentioned. So so, as you said,
[5:53] Speaker 3: we all know when you travel to Europe, you go
[5:56] Speaker 3: to these incredible churches, hopefully attending mass there, but you're
[5:58] Speaker 3: also walking through them, and you're in these cathedrals they'd
[6:01] Speaker 3: lift you to a to a soaring new level that
[6:04] Speaker 3: a modern bunker style, you know, function over foreign.
[6:08] Speaker 2: Type of does not do anything. I'll give you one example.
[6:12] Speaker 4: So for many years I was at Mondoline Seminary right
[6:14] Speaker 4: off say Chicago, and I became rector there eventually. But
[6:17] Speaker 4: the house chapel in the student's house was uglified in
[6:22] Speaker 4: the nineteen seventies and was turned into this very bland, beige,
[6:26] Speaker 4: unremarkable place, you know, And that's when I came there
[6:29] Speaker 4: to the seminary.
[6:30] Speaker 2: That's what I knew. And then most of my years.
[6:32] Speaker 5: As a professor it was like that. I always hated it.
[6:36] Speaker 5: And here's the thing.
[6:37] Speaker 4: No one would ever have dreamed in any of those
[6:39] Speaker 4: years when you brought someone to that building, oh let.
[6:43] Speaker 5: Me show you the chapel.
[6:44] Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean never once. It would never have occurred
[6:46] Speaker 4: to anyone ever to do that. Now we would have said, oh, well,
[6:49] Speaker 4: it's the worship space and you know it's where the
[6:52] Speaker 4: assembly gathers.
[6:54] Speaker 5: Right. No one would ever have brought anyone there to say,
[6:57] Speaker 5: oh let me Well.
[6:58] Speaker 4: When I was rectored and okay, I'm in charge, something
[7:03] Speaker 4: I could do and make a long story short, we
[7:05] Speaker 4: raised the money and all that, and we we redid
[7:07] Speaker 4: it as the John Paul the Second Chapel, and I'm
[7:11] Speaker 4: excessively proud of it.
[7:13] Speaker 2: You know.
[7:13] Speaker 5: We turned into a really.
[7:15] Speaker 4: Beautiful space, nineteen sanguass windows with the saints and blessed
[7:18] Speaker 4: of John Paul, this gorgeous portrait of John Paul the Second,
[7:21] Speaker 4: our Lady of Guadalupe, the sanctuary redone beautiful statues of
[7:25] Speaker 4: the Joseph and Mary. Well, the minute it was done,
[7:30] Speaker 4: everybody wanted to bring. Yes, they wanted to bring their family.
[7:33] Speaker 4: They wanted to side. When can we can we get
[7:35] Speaker 4: a tour of it? And we want to bring well,
[7:37] Speaker 4: of course that's what the beautiful does.
[7:39] Speaker 5: It is.
[7:40] Speaker 4: It's alluring, you know. It's as though we wanted to
[7:43] Speaker 4: jettison there in favor of what.
[7:47] Speaker 2: I don't know.
[7:49] Speaker 5: You know, you could you could play a Protestant Catholic
[7:52] Speaker 5: game to some degree, you know, where the Protestants were
[7:55] Speaker 5: wary of beauty.
[7:56] Speaker 4: I mean, Luther was the fear that it will be
[7:59] Speaker 4: a distract and idolatry, it'll take our attention away from God,
[8:02] Speaker 4: and so the churches were kind of emptied out. Well,
[8:06] Speaker 4: we imitated that, in my judgment, foolishly we imitated I
[8:13] Speaker 4: love a lot of elements of Protestism, that's one I
[8:15] Speaker 4: don't love, you know, And we imitated that, no, no,
[8:19] Speaker 4: beauty is a rout of access to God.
[8:22] Speaker 3: Reflecting on the Holocaust, shifting gears a little bit, George
[8:25] Speaker 3: Steiner famously observed, quote, we now know that a man
[8:29] Speaker 3: can read Gerta or Rilka in the evening, they can
[8:31] Speaker 3: play back and Schubert and go to his day's work
[8:34] Speaker 3: at Auschwitz in the morning.
[8:35] Speaker 2: Close quote.
[8:36] Speaker 3: So my question, kind of reflecting up on that, again
[8:39] Speaker 3: dark and menacing quote, with great truth to it, does
[8:44] Speaker 3: beauty civilize? And if so, what are we to do
[8:48] Speaker 3: with the conundrum of a Himmler or a Hadrick, very
[8:52] Speaker 3: well educated in music and literature and so on, that
[8:57] Speaker 3: blithely run concentration camps that or millions. So first to
[9:02] Speaker 3: the question of the civil the civilizing influence of beauty,
[9:05] Speaker 3: and then what what went wrong in these circumstances where
[9:09] Speaker 3: these people were raised, and they were they were nursed
[9:13] Speaker 3: on the beautiful, the liberal arts, the music, and so on,
[9:16] Speaker 3: and they went so horribly in the wrong direction.
[9:19] Speaker 4: Again, you don't have superficial questions, because right the instinct
[9:25] Speaker 4: you have is absolutely right, because the transcendentals are all
[9:28] Speaker 4: grounded as being.
[9:29] Speaker 5: They should be mutually implicative.
[9:31] Speaker 4: The truth should lead you to the good, which is
[9:33] Speaker 4: leads you to the beautiful or the beautiful to the
[9:35] Speaker 4: good and to the truth. That's the Charles Ryder, Yeah,
[9:39] Speaker 4: go from beautiful to good to true. That's Baltas are
[9:42] Speaker 4: by the way, the way he puts his trilogy together
[9:44] Speaker 4: is beautiful to the good, to the truth.
[9:46] Speaker 5: They should do that.
[9:47] Speaker 4: There should be kind of circumincessio of the three elements,
[9:51] Speaker 4: you know. But we live in a fallen world, right,
[9:54] Speaker 4: and our minds and wills are fallen.
[9:57] Speaker 5: And that's a sign of it.
[9:59] Speaker 4: And that's that's the particularly telling sign, isn't it That
[10:02] Speaker 4: you could listen to Mozart in the morning and then
[10:05] Speaker 4: butcher people in the afternoon. It should not be that way.
[10:09] Speaker 4: That's a sign of the disintegration of the self.
[10:13] Speaker 5: Newman knew that.
[10:14] Speaker 4: In the nineteenth century. He urged people to cultivate the
[10:18] Speaker 4: arts because it improves you morally, at least it should.
[10:23] Speaker 4: That refinement in your esthetic consciousness should lead to a
[10:28] Speaker 4: refinement in your moral activity. And I think at best
[10:31] Speaker 4: it does people that spend a lot of time in
[10:34] Speaker 4: beautiful churches should become better people. I think that makes sense,
[10:39] Speaker 4: and they should be led to the true you know,
[10:42] Speaker 4: more directly, but I think that's a sign of the
[10:44] Speaker 4: fall when those things get separated out.
[10:49] Speaker 3: Segment three, Beauty and the Catholic Faith reflecting on an
[10:53] Speaker 3: intellectual and theological hero, hans Or von Balthazar, that should
[10:56] Speaker 3: Robert Baron tells us quote Balthazar says, anything beautifl full
[11:00] Speaker 3: first arrests you.
[11:01] Speaker 2: You're stopped in your tracks by it.
[11:04] Speaker 3: Then Balthazar says, the beautiful elects you. You've been chosen.
[11:09] Speaker 3: And finally he says, the beautiful always sends you. You're
[11:12] Speaker 3: sent on a mission.
[11:13] Speaker 2: Close quote.
[11:15] Speaker 3: So, Bishop, we've alluded to this and especially the direction
[11:18] Speaker 3: of beauty to goodness to truth. But you've described beauty
[11:21] Speaker 3: as the arrowhead of evangelization and that we should lead
[11:24] Speaker 3: with beauty. Can you just explain about just how that's
[11:28] Speaker 3: informed your ministry.
[11:30] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[11:31] Speaker 4: I want to start though with that quote you have there,
[11:33] Speaker 4: because I learned that from both of there. We talk
[11:36] Speaker 4: about esthetic arrest best at moment when you're stopped in
[11:41] Speaker 4: your tracks. You know, my favorite pop song is like
[11:45] Speaker 4: a rolling Stone about Dylan, and I remember when I
[11:47] Speaker 4: read Patty Smith's account. It's one of her favorite songs,
[11:51] Speaker 4: and she said she was driving your car. It's like
[11:54] Speaker 4: when they came out in nineteen sixty five and the
[11:56] Speaker 4: songs on the radio, and she heard it and she
[11:59] Speaker 4: said she had to stop the car, pull over, and
[12:02] Speaker 4: she got out and sat on the curb and just
[12:06] Speaker 4: had to I had to take it in wow, because
[12:09] Speaker 4: it was so rearranging her consciousness.
[12:13] Speaker 5: That's aesthetic arrest in the literal sense. She had to stop.
[12:17] Speaker 4: And my memory, I didn't hear I remember hearing it
[12:20] Speaker 4: in my dorm room at Notre Dame when I was
[12:22] Speaker 4: a freshman in college, but I had similar experience. I'm like,
[12:27] Speaker 4: I've never heard a song with that before. I've never
[12:30] Speaker 4: heard anything like that in terms of popular music. And
[12:35] Speaker 4: wait a minute, what did he just say there?
[12:37] Speaker 5: And you know pop songs or I Love You Love
[12:39] Speaker 5: Me is Blue in Me? And then Bob Dylan, who's
[12:43] Speaker 5: who was like T S. Eliott and like, where is
[12:45] Speaker 5: that coming from? That's aesthetic arrest or.
[12:48] Speaker 4: It's James Joyce stopped in his tracks by the girl
[12:52] Speaker 4: out in the look at her, you know, and see.
[12:59] Speaker 4: The rest has a lot to do with that suspension
[13:03] Speaker 4: of ordinary consciousness of the categorical world.
[13:07] Speaker 2: And I'm the tech world.
[13:10] Speaker 4: Something stops you and forces you to look really at
[13:14] Speaker 4: a higher level. It might lead you to the Fraga
[13:18] Speaker 4: nach dem zion if you let it right. But you've
[13:21] Speaker 4: got to be stopped first of all. And it's very
[13:23] Speaker 4: poorly in spiritual direction. If you're working with someone spiritually,
[13:27] Speaker 4: you have to stop them at a certain point. You
[13:29] Speaker 4: have to kind of gramb them, Wait a minute, stop,
[13:32] Speaker 4: you need to listen and look, you're or it's the
[13:36] Speaker 4: Buddhist thing of the monkey mind.
[13:37] Speaker 5: You got to calm the monkey mind. You have to stop. Now.
[13:41] Speaker 5: What's going to stop you?
[13:42] Speaker 4: Well, it's something beautiful, you know, look, look, and then
[13:46] Speaker 4: it elects you. I love that because that's my experience too,
[13:51] Speaker 4: that when you're really in the grip of the beautiful,
[13:54] Speaker 4: what do you want to do? You you've been chosen
[13:57] Speaker 4: by it. It's like, yeah, I who.
[14:00] Speaker 5: Am I that I should experience such a thing.
[14:04] Speaker 4: That's the way you feel. I've told this story before.
[14:08] Speaker 4: I barely understood what I was reading. But when I
[14:10] Speaker 4: was a ninth grader and Romeo and Juliet. We were
[14:14] Speaker 4: reading in class and they assigned and we had to
[14:17] Speaker 4: read the words. I didn't know what was going on,
[14:20] Speaker 4: but I had that feeling, Huh, that's such a thing
[14:26] Speaker 4: should exist. I never imagined it that there could be
[14:30] Speaker 4: such a thing as this language like this, And who
[14:33] Speaker 4: am I.
[14:34] Speaker 5: That I get to hear this?
[14:37] Speaker 2: Right?
[14:38] Speaker 4: The first time I saw the great Gothic churches, I
[14:41] Speaker 4: had study them and seen pictures of them. But when
[14:44] Speaker 4: I saw them, you know, who am I? I'm standing
[14:48] Speaker 4: in front of Shark Cathedral. How did that happen?
[14:50] Speaker 5: Yeah? Who am I? That's being elected? You've been chosen it.
[14:56] Speaker 2: You know.
[14:56] Speaker 5: I've often used an image of from movies The Close.
[14:59] Speaker 4: And a Third Kind, which is a great movie in
[15:02] Speaker 4: so many ways, but it's to me, it's all about religion.
[15:04] Speaker 4: It's all about the spiritual life. The alien right ships
[15:09] Speaker 4: that choose certain people, they mark them, and then they
[15:14] Speaker 4: have to they have to come into deeper communion. That's
[15:17] Speaker 4: what it feels like when the beautiful elects you, right,
[15:20] Speaker 4: but then the third step it sends you. You're a
[15:23] Speaker 4: missionary now, And like Bob Dylan, since I was fourteen,
[15:27] Speaker 4: I've been a missionary for Bob Dylan, no question about it.
[15:30] Speaker 4: Everyone I talk aboutut Dylan all the time. They have
[15:32] Speaker 4: you heard about this son? Do you hear this song?
[15:34] Speaker 4: That's amazing? What you don't like Bob Dylan? What you
[15:37] Speaker 4: talk you about it? Have you heard this song?
[15:39] Speaker 5: You become? You see a movie? Did you see that
[15:41] Speaker 5: movie that was so good?
[15:43] Speaker 4: You? Oh you gotta you become a missionary for it? Right,
[15:46] Speaker 4: you've been sent?
[15:48] Speaker 5: Well, now that's.
[15:49] Speaker 4: There's the gospel is look at Jesus. Now, time and
[15:52] Speaker 4: time again, people are arrested, they're stopped in their tracks
[15:57] Speaker 4: by him. They're elected. It's the thing he chooses the disciples. Right,
[16:02] Speaker 4: they elected. They're elected. And then now go your son
[16:06] Speaker 4: on mission, go tell the world. And here we are too,
[16:09] Speaker 4: millennial later and here we are still. Have you heard
[16:12] Speaker 4: have you heard about Jesus? If you've heard about what
[16:14] Speaker 4: he who he is? Have you heard about Jesus Christ,
[16:16] Speaker 4: Let me tell.
[16:17] Speaker 5: You about him. That's all Word on Fire is about that.
[16:20] Speaker 5: It's it's being sent on mission.
[16:22] Speaker 4: Uh So that's why that's how the beautiful finds its
[16:25] Speaker 4: way into evangelization.
[16:27] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's wonderful.
[16:29] Speaker 3: By the way, there's a story William Molser's one of
[16:31] Speaker 3: iconic doctors who put JOHNS.
[16:34] Speaker 2: Hopkins on the map. He's a godfather internal medicine.
[16:36] Speaker 3: And he was such an enthusiastic teacher that when he
[16:39] Speaker 3: was doing an autopsy or what have you, he'd come
[16:41] Speaker 3: across a very aneurysm, a little aneurysm in the corner
[16:45] Speaker 3: of one of the intricate arteries of the brain that
[16:48] Speaker 3: was associated with the polycystic kidneys. And there was there's
[16:52] Speaker 3: people always know that often know that if you have
[16:54] Speaker 3: somebody those policis a kidney disease, you'd be concerned.
[16:56] Speaker 2: About bury aneurysms in the brain.
[16:58] Speaker 3: And when he identified this during the autopsy, he yelled
[17:01] Speaker 3: out as loud as he could, Hody Toady boys look
[17:03] Speaker 3: at this, and they all skittered over there and and
[17:06] Speaker 3: and there was a respect obviously for the dead, but
[17:07] Speaker 3: it was also this is the wonder of certain patterns
[17:11] Speaker 3: in creation. And I want to share this with you because,
[17:14] Speaker 3: like you said, when you're enthusiastic about something, it's it's
[17:17] Speaker 3: William F.
[17:18] Speaker 2: Buckley said this, he goes it's it's it's almost a
[17:20] Speaker 2: crime not to share that love you have for this right.
[17:24] Speaker 4: You know, no Buckley's a good example because luckily had
[17:26] Speaker 4: so many enthusiasms.
[17:27] Speaker 2: Yes, and he was always.
[17:29] Speaker 4: Talking about them, and not not any obnoxious aggressive way.
[17:32] Speaker 4: It was like, hey, this thing sailing, or it's a
[17:36] Speaker 4: harpsichord playing or whatever. He did, Uh yeah, and he
[17:40] Speaker 4: did it with a great kind of joyful enthusiasm.
[17:43] Speaker 3: The German poet rayner Maria Rilka once noted, quote, for
[17:47] Speaker 3: beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we
[17:50] Speaker 3: are barely able to endure. And it amazes us so
[17:53] Speaker 3: because it serenely disdains to destroy us. Every angel is
[17:57] Speaker 3: terrible close quote Now this seems gonna dark, and they
[18:01] Speaker 3: go totally get And he said, and so in the
[18:04] Speaker 3: Catholicism series, you noted how the disciples, upon a witnessing
[18:07] Speaker 3: Christ and his wisdom and power, were amazed and afraid.
[18:10] Speaker 3: And of course, upon first encountering human beings, angels consistently reassure,
[18:13] Speaker 3: do not be afraid. Is there something fearsome awesome in
[18:17] Speaker 3: its original definition in the truly beautiful.
[18:20] Speaker 4: Yes, because it shakes you out of yourself and go
[18:23] Speaker 4: back right back to people. It shakes you out of
[18:25] Speaker 4: the workaday consciousness and puts you in the presence ultimately
[18:30] Speaker 4: of the source of existence, and that's terrible. And the angels,
[18:36] Speaker 4: you know, the Sarah Fhim, they're on fire because they're
[18:38] Speaker 4: so close to the divine presence. When they break into
[18:42] Speaker 4: your life, into your world, of course, it's terrifying. And
[18:46] Speaker 4: so we domesticate angels as a little you know, POUTI
[18:48] Speaker 4: these little babies.
[18:49] Speaker 5: With the wings.
[18:51] Speaker 4: No, no, no, the angels are overwhelming. But but see,
[18:55] Speaker 4: then the true art participates in that. It seems to
[18:58] Speaker 4: me that there is something terrifying about great art because
[19:02] Speaker 4: it wrenches you out of your ordinary consciousness into a
[19:06] Speaker 4: higher world. So even something that the subject matter might
[19:10] Speaker 4: be very kind of gentle, but if it's real art,
[19:13] Speaker 4: it is terrifying.
[19:14] Speaker 5: It's awesome.
[19:15] Speaker 4: That's where I mean, K got that part of it right,
[19:17] Speaker 4: that the sublime has that quality of overwhelming, like when
[19:21] Speaker 4: you're at the mountain range or I remember what I
[19:23] Speaker 4: stood for the first time at the foot of the
[19:25] Speaker 4: Cologne Cathedral, which is the biggest, the grandest of them all.
[19:29] Speaker 4: It is like a great mountain, it's this great spiritual mountain. Yeah,
[19:35] Speaker 4: it's more than a little terrifying. I know, I totally
[19:39] Speaker 4: get that. I think truly great art has that disconcerting,
[19:44] Speaker 4: ripping you out of your ordinary.
[19:46] Speaker 5: Consciousness quality to it.
[19:50] Speaker 2: Yeah, I see.
[19:50] Speaker 5: We always want to control things.
[19:54] Speaker 4: So it comes under my aeges and it fits into
[19:57] Speaker 4: my subjective consciousness.
[19:59] Speaker 2: But the real, truly.
[20:00] Speaker 4: Beautiful breaks into and rearranges my consciousness. I become a
[20:05] Speaker 4: different person because of it. I don't control it. It
[20:07] Speaker 4: starts controlling me. And that's frightening.
[20:11] Speaker 3: When there's a little bit of the brave New World
[20:12] Speaker 3: Soma kind of notion that to the way we were
[20:15] Speaker 3: living our lives. Nowadays, we're all kind of sort of
[20:18] Speaker 3: as we talked about, we're sort of lulled into this
[20:21] Speaker 3: torpor of the comfortable technology and so on. And so
[20:24] Speaker 3: it's interesting that whether it's a Flannery O'Connor misfit just
[20:27] Speaker 3: shooting this grandmother, or it's the awesomeness of a Colonne
[20:32] Speaker 3: cathedral either way, and obviously the Flannery side is meant
[20:35] Speaker 3: to shows an explosion of suffering in the midst and
[20:38] Speaker 3: grace in the midst of it and so on. But
[20:40] Speaker 3: the bottom line is it strikes me that there has
[20:42] Speaker 3: to be God reaches into people's lives with that shock factor.
[20:47] Speaker 4: And especially to see that we're in a fallen world,
[20:49] Speaker 4: so we have to redouble it because if we had
[20:51] Speaker 4: never fallen, we'd still find God rather terrifying, but now
[20:55] Speaker 4: that we've fallen, he's even more so. That's why the way, Chris,
[21:00] Speaker 4: what's the hearty Christianity? Is this awful, awful image of
[21:04] Speaker 4: the cross? And we're so used to it, and it's
[21:07] Speaker 4: been so domesticated, But we are the weirdest religion of
[21:11] Speaker 4: them all, and.
[21:13] Speaker 5: Nothing else is even close.
[21:14] Speaker 4: It seems to me when you say, at the heart
[21:17] Speaker 4: of your religion is this thirty year old man, in
[21:21] Speaker 4: complete failure and utter suffering, dying on an instrument of torture,
[21:26] Speaker 4: and that we hold that up.
[21:29] Speaker 5: I look, I'm wearing.
[21:31] Speaker 4: You know, there's no religion weirder than urs. And that
[21:36] Speaker 4: we say, well this is God.
[21:39] Speaker 5: You know, well that is pretty terrifying.
[21:41] Speaker 4: And the cross is terrifying to all of us sinners.
[21:45] Speaker 4: And I don't mean terrifying in some you know Stephen kingway,
[21:48] Speaker 4: I mean it's terrifying in that it shakes and turns
[21:53] Speaker 4: and breaks through and rearranges all of that. You know
[22:00] Speaker 4: that that Baltazar can say, look at that cross and
[22:04] Speaker 4: that's a good example because what we've done, it's not
[22:07] Speaker 4: a bad thing. We beautified and say by putting gold
[22:10] Speaker 4: on it and so on and decorating it. But that's
[22:12] Speaker 4: okay because we're saying, yes, that awful cross outside of Jerusalem,
[22:17] Speaker 4: on that terrible place, the skull plays and this man dying,
[22:20] Speaker 4: this horrible death, but that is where God made his salvation.
[22:27] Speaker 2: Known to hum.
[22:29] Speaker 5: That's a strange and wonderful religion.
[22:33] Speaker 3: If beauty points to the good, and the good opens
[22:36] Speaker 3: us to truth, which in.
[22:37] Speaker 2: Turn brings us to God. Is there concern that.
[22:40] Speaker 3: People could get stuck on beauty and have a religion
[22:43] Speaker 3: of esthetics instead of a religion of the redeeming Christ.
[22:46] Speaker 5: Yeah, but it could happen with the other ones too.
[22:48] Speaker 4: Right, you could get stuck on the truth, and you
[22:50] Speaker 4: could become a rationalist, Right, you get stuck on the
[22:53] Speaker 4: good and become a moralist in a sort of overbearing way.
[22:58] Speaker 4: So you could get stuck at any of those levels.
[23:00] Speaker 4: That's true, and it's right. The interface among them is
[23:04] Speaker 4: the way it works. You're supposed to. They should all
[23:07] Speaker 4: work in a kind of iconic manner where you go
[23:10] Speaker 4: through them to the source, right where the truth of
[23:13] Speaker 4: that glass, whether it's studied by a chemist or a physicist,
[23:17] Speaker 4: should lead to the source of all intelligibility.
[23:21] Speaker 5: Where the beauty of a.
[23:23] Speaker 4: Good act when you say the simplest active kindness. But
[23:26] Speaker 4: if you trace it all the way, it leads you
[23:28] Speaker 4: to the source of goodness. And the girl standing of
[23:32] Speaker 4: the off the beach in Dublin that James Joyce saw, Oh,
[23:36] Speaker 4: Heavenly God, that's the way it's supposed to work, right.
[23:39] Speaker 5: But yeah, you can get stuck, and that's called idolatry.
[23:42] Speaker 4: The Bible knows all about that is when you a
[23:44] Speaker 4: lesser good becomes the supreme good, and then then you
[23:47] Speaker 4: got trouble.
[23:48] Speaker 5: And so part of our moral education is precisely along
[23:52] Speaker 5: those lines. Don't get stuck.
[23:56] Speaker 4: Don't get stuck with wealth, pleasure, power, honor, don't get
[23:58] Speaker 4: stuck with truth, goodness, beauty at lower levels. Allow them
[24:03] Speaker 4: to carry you all the way to the source. Right.
[24:05] Speaker 4: But that's called idolatry, and it's the primary problem in
[24:11] Speaker 4: the Bible. Before you have any particular sins, that's always
[24:14] Speaker 4: the problem.
[24:14] Speaker 5: It's idolatry.
[24:17] Speaker 3: In the dark days of the Holocaust, the young n
[24:20] Speaker 3: Frank confide in her diary. Quote, I don't think of
[24:22] Speaker 3: all the misery, but of the beauty that remains close.
[24:25] Speaker 3: Quote how might we craft our lens to see and
[24:28] Speaker 3: be inspired by beauty in the face of the trials
[24:32] Speaker 3: of the troubled world?
[24:33] Speaker 5: Some where the world didn't deserve Anne frank that how
[24:37] Speaker 5: old was she?
[24:38] Speaker 2: Like? Twelve?
[24:38] Speaker 5: Yeah? But see what's she's exhibiting.
[24:43] Speaker 4: There is a very deep and powerful intuition where sin abounds,
[24:47] Speaker 4: grace abounds the more and that.
[24:48] Speaker 5: Has to be true.
[24:49] Speaker 4: It's a metaphysical principle, because the good the evils of
[24:52] Speaker 4: Provazio boni. It's a privation of the good. Ugliness does
[24:56] Speaker 4: not have a substance. Ugliness is a privation of beauty
[24:59] Speaker 4: that ought to be there. Falsity is an emptiness, it's
[25:05] Speaker 4: a non being. It's the lack of truth that ought
[25:07] Speaker 4: to be there. See so, even in the wicked world
[25:12] Speaker 4: that she was living, in the world of Nazi domination,
[25:15] Speaker 4: she had that intuition to say, But but what's beautiful
[25:18] Speaker 4: is always greater. It has to be because wickedness can
[25:21] Speaker 4: exist only parasitically. It exists only as a deformation of
[25:26] Speaker 4: the good. So the good is always greater. That's not pollyannish,
[25:31] Speaker 4: that's not naive head. That's good, solid metaphysics. But it
[25:34] Speaker 4: should translate into good spirituality as well. So whenever we're
[25:38] Speaker 4: attempting to say, oh, the world is just a rack,
[25:41] Speaker 4: it's just a mess, looks it's nothing, but sin uh no,
[25:44] Speaker 4: no to te gras. You know, there's barn I knows
[25:48] Speaker 4: to te gras, everything's grace. What we call wickedness and falsity,
[25:53] Speaker 4: they're real, but but not in the full metaphysical sense.
[25:58] Speaker 4: They are privations of the good, evations of the truth.
[26:01] Speaker 4: They're like cavities in the tooth. The tooth remains good, right,
[26:05] Speaker 4: but he's got a cavity in it, so we have
[26:07] Speaker 4: to address it.
[26:08] Speaker 2: You know.
[26:11] Speaker 5: But that's a deep intuition. She's exhibiting that that the
[26:14] Speaker 5: beautiful is more enduring.
[26:16] Speaker 2: Isn't it striking?
[26:17] Speaker 3: Though, just when you're talking about getting stuck on the true,
[26:20] Speaker 3: the good, the beautiful and not going all the way
[26:21] Speaker 3: to God, you realize, from a devilish standpoint, how many,
[26:28] Speaker 3: how many defective alternatives we are consistently presented with daily
[26:34] Speaker 3: that would keep us from getting to God.
[26:36] Speaker 5: Well, you know, look, there are like sort of obvious
[26:40] Speaker 5: bad choices.
[26:41] Speaker 4: But look how the Bible is just so relentless. If
[26:45] Speaker 4: we were saying, now, what's what's a value in the world, Well,
[26:48] Speaker 4: the family, of course. Who's against the family? Everyone loved
[26:52] Speaker 4: the family is so important. But look at the Bible,
[26:55] Speaker 4: how relentless it is. Abraham, Uh huh, here I am Lord.
[26:59] Speaker 4: You know Isaac, your son, the son of the promise
[27:02] Speaker 4: of the your old age. Yeah, Isaac, whom you love
[27:05] Speaker 4: you know? Yeah huh yeah, I know.
[27:06] Speaker 5: I want you to sacrifice them to me.
[27:08] Speaker 4: Well, and we say, oh, how awful and all this
[27:11] Speaker 4: it's the Bible, and it's typically i'd say Jewish way.
[27:16] Speaker 5: Yes we love the family.
[27:18] Speaker 4: Yes, our kids are are a great, great, great importance
[27:21] Speaker 4: with but they can't be of ultimate importance to us,
[27:26] Speaker 4: even our kids. Lord, I'll follow you, but first, let
[27:29] Speaker 4: me bury my father.
[27:31] Speaker 5: With the dead. Buryer.
[27:31] Speaker 4: They're dead, your father and your family they're supreme importance, No,
[27:37] Speaker 4: not supreme. They're of great importance, but they're not of
[27:39] Speaker 4: supreme reportance. The Bible is relentless, and it's it's not
[27:44] Speaker 4: just laying out doctrinal truth. It does that, but it
[27:48] Speaker 4: it's like a Wittenstein move. It invites us into spiritual exercises.
[27:52] Speaker 4: I think so like the Abraham story or the the
[27:56] Speaker 4: Dead Bearer, they're dead. It's inviting us to move into
[27:59] Speaker 4: that space and say, Okay, could I do that? Could
[28:03] Speaker 4: I say that if God really said to you, sacrifice
[28:06] Speaker 4: to me one of your daughters. Yeah, but see, you're
[28:10] Speaker 4: meant to move into that space to say what Now,
[28:14] Speaker 4: let's use that counterversial term.
[28:16] Speaker 5: What's the order of Morris in my life? What's the
[28:19] Speaker 5: order of love in my life?
[28:20] Speaker 2: Right?
[28:23] Speaker 4: You must love the Lord, your God with all your heart,
[28:26] Speaker 4: all your soul, all your mind, and then your neighbors, yourself. Okay,
[28:31] Speaker 4: that's the order of Morris. The supreme goods gotta be
[28:34] Speaker 4: loved first. And that's a boy, oh boy, a frightening
[28:38] Speaker 4: desperate business, especially for us falling people. We're all fallen,
[28:42] Speaker 4: and so we're all drawn to things of this world.
[28:45] Speaker 4: What if you're say, like your country, Oh, I love
[28:47] Speaker 4: my country. I'm a patriot, But do you love God
[28:51] Speaker 4: more than your country? Unless you do, you're you're a mess,
[28:54] Speaker 4: and you're gonna be very dangerous.
[28:56] Speaker 5: In fact, you'd be very dangerous. Even I love my
[29:00] Speaker 5: family more than.
[29:01] Speaker 4: God, you'll be very dangerous to yourself and right, uh,
[29:07] Speaker 4: that's talk about about like Rica and the angels be.
[29:11] Speaker 4: That's the frightening, dangerous business of the Bible draws us into.
[29:16] Speaker 5: But it's it's serious stuff.
[29:19] Speaker 3: What's like the demand like you like Jesus identifying unless
[29:22] Speaker 3: you drink my blood or even I mean the turn
[29:24] Speaker 3: away when when all the people went away and said
[29:26] Speaker 3: this is this is too hard of a truth.
[29:28] Speaker 2: I mean.
[29:29] Speaker 3: Another evidence to me of the authenticity of the Catholic
[29:32] Speaker 3: faith is that it doesn't just make you cozy. I mean,
[29:36] Speaker 3: it doesn't often it actually challenges you, shakes you up,
[29:40] Speaker 3: you know, And that's why it's starting. People sometimes walk
[29:43] Speaker 3: away from the faith because something I don't like about it.
[29:44] Speaker 3: And Chesterton said, we need a church is right where
[29:46] Speaker 3: we're wrong. Now, a church is right where we're right,
[29:48] Speaker 3: you know, more than anything else.
[29:50] Speaker 4: Unless you love me more than your mother and father,
[29:53] Speaker 4: more than your very life, you're not worthy of me.
[29:57] Speaker 5: There it is. That's the same thing. That's the same thing,
[29:59] Speaker 5: unless you love.
[30:00] Speaker 4: I'm the sumum bonum around here, not even your mother
[30:03] Speaker 4: and father, not even your own life. So most of
[30:07] Speaker 4: us sinners like push comfort the show. I guess you
[30:10] Speaker 4: know I'm my assume I'm the sum of boneum around here.
[30:13] Speaker 5: Ye. No, no, no.
[30:14] Speaker 4: Unless you love me more than the people you love
[30:18] Speaker 4: the most in the world, you're not worthy of me.
[30:22] Speaker 4: I don't know any more serious spiritual exercise anywhere in
[30:25] Speaker 4: the world in the literature of.
[30:26] Speaker 5: Religion than that, and that's that's the Biblical test though, right, Well.
[30:31] Speaker 3: Last question, Bishop, You've been very gentius with your time
[30:34] Speaker 3: over twenty five years. Is the twenty fifth anniversary of
[30:36] Speaker 3: Word on Fire and what an incredible quarter of a
[30:39] Speaker 3: century it's been over twenty five years. How has beauty
[30:42] Speaker 3: figured into the ministry and the mission of Word on
[30:44] Speaker 3: Fire and does beauty in fact lead.
[30:47] Speaker 2: People to Christ?
[30:48] Speaker 4: Well, you know, I don't think in the beginning We're
[30:50] Speaker 4: on Fire it was so explicitly. I started preaching on
[30:54] Speaker 4: the radio, and then we got a website that housed
[30:57] Speaker 4: the sermons, and then I started with courting some of
[31:00] Speaker 4: my retreat talks that sort of thing. I don't know
[31:03] Speaker 4: if from the beginning if you had said to me
[31:04] Speaker 4: and I was beauty, Yeah, I don't think I ever
[31:06] Speaker 4: said that. But I think the turning point was the
[31:09] Speaker 4: Catholism series that I took my inspiration from Kenneth Clark,
[31:14] Speaker 4: and you know, for Clark, I think beauty was the
[31:18] Speaker 4: way in did the Civilization series. Civilization, right, that was
[31:21] Speaker 4: the way in. And then once we made it and
[31:25] Speaker 4: we all kind of together saw wow that we really
[31:29] Speaker 4: did capture much of the beauty of Catholicism.
[31:32] Speaker 5: I began in an explicit.
[31:34] Speaker 4: Way then to say, oh, yeah, we got to continue
[31:36] Speaker 4: on that route, and then I wanted it to be
[31:38] Speaker 4: operating at a high level intellectually and esthetically. So I
[31:44] Speaker 4: think it became much more conscious for me after the
[31:48] Speaker 4: Catholism series. But does it work, Yes, because I just
[31:52] Speaker 4: got so many testimonies of people that they were drawn in.
[31:56] Speaker 4: I mean, that series had a lot to do with
[31:58] Speaker 4: the pivotal players too. The beauty of our books, yeah,
[32:02] Speaker 4: you know, Brandon Vaught and his wonderful publication team. The
[32:06] Speaker 4: beauty of the Word on Fire Bible. We hear over
[32:09] Speaker 4: and over and over and over again.
[32:10] Speaker 5: People brought in by it.
[32:11] Speaker 4: So yes, I understood it theoretically through people like Baltazarre,
[32:14] Speaker 4: and then I saw it in action with the Word
[32:17] Speaker 4: on Fire.
[32:17] Speaker 2: Wonderful vision.
[32:19] Speaker 3: Robert Baron, priest, evangelist and ardent proponent of leading with beauty.
[32:23] Speaker 3: Thank you so much for this conversation. It's always a
[32:26] Speaker 3: pleasure to talk to you.
[32:26] Speaker 5: Thanks Ted.
[32:27] Speaker 2: That's a joy for me.
[32:29] Speaker 1: That does it for us today. Thanks for joining us
[32:31] Speaker 1: on the Word on Fire Show. If you're interested in
[32:33] Speaker 1: learning more about how Word on Fire can help you
[32:36] Speaker 1: grow closer to Christ, become a better evangelist with and
[32:39] Speaker 1: for others, and work for the common good, consider joining
[32:42] Speaker 1: the Word on Fire Institute. Check us out at institute
[32:45] Speaker 1: dot Wordonfire dot org. That's institute dot Word on Fire
[32:49] Speaker 1: dot org. We'll see you next time. God bless and
[32:52] Speaker 1: protect you.

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