God is not Beautiful; God is Beauty

Holy Mystery, Beloved, Beauty, hear my prayer:

In this moment, I finally understand what it means that you re not beautiful, but beauty itself. You are the face that always changes, is never the same, is always mystery, and yet intimately given to me.

I could watch a single face change aspects a thousand times, and it would not be enough, it would not satisfy the whither of my human self-transcendence. No, not even such a one as this could be the horizon that both endlessly teases and satisfies.

No beautiful face, no beautiful image, no work of art, however complex and no matter how visible from manifold angles, could capture what God is. God is not beautiful, God is beauty, and all art, all aesthetics, seeks to capture beauty while remaining fundamentally unable to do so. No artist can paint the face of the beloved, because she is loveliness itself; he must content himself with the lovely, and no more.

But the beloved who awaits me at the end of the aisle, by the altar, whom no third person can see or understand, is beauty beyond beauty that I can ever fully know.

I could admire a beautiful person and be captured, but there would always be the thought that this person is not all the other beautiful people who capture me. This person, however lovely, is only one instance of loveliness among many. A photo is a static instance of beauty, while a video is an attempt to give the illusion of a dynamic beauty that evolves and changes.

God, you are neither photo nor video. You are the face that shifts and changes, not as impenetrable fog, but as the dynamism of beauty itself. You are not impossible to grasp. I can hold you close, smell you, touch you, kiss you, take you by the hand and lead you to the place where we can be one, I can do all this - you do not flutter in and out of my life, but remain, because you love me. You have given yourself to me.

And yet, what is it you have given? The fullness of your mystery, the incomprehensibility of your beauty, which seem to me like the shifting and changing of an infinite sea. Your eyes are the eyes of my dreams, but of all colors and more. Your scent is the delight of my senses, but of all scents and more. Your lips are the caress of my being, but in all ways and more.

Not one image, no series of images, however beautiful, will ever satisfy me. No, I was not meant for beautiful things. I was meant for beauty itself, by your decree. And in your fundamental intention, you were meant for me too, because in spite of the wretch that I am, you love me. That is all I could ever need, because your love is mysterious dynamism itself; every moment, your love is more full and different. You beckon my reason into new frontiers, leading me through the streets, into the church, down the aisle, to the altar.

And what waits for us there? An "I do" that will not be breathed only once and then dissipate into air. It will be an "I do" that rings in air, in hearts, for all eternity.

My God, you are my joy and delight. None will ever satisfy me the way you can, because you are not beautiful; you are beauty itself.

"Heimat ist nur by Dir.

Sei mein Licht, der mir wo ich bin zeigt. Sei mein Welt, und mein Herz, dass mir wer ich bin sagt."

"I've had time to write a book about, the way you act and look; I haven't got a paragraph. Words are always getting in my way....anyway, I love you. That's all I have to tell you. That's all I've got to say."

All my life, I have vainly sought beauty in lesser instances. For that, I beg forgiveness, both for the injuries I caused myself, and the injuries I caused others.

You lift my head by the chin and turn my eyes to yours, those deep, changing pools of infinity, and you invite me in without reservation. You're not here to cleanse me of sin, you're not here to judge me to paradise, inferno or purgatory, you're not here to make ethical demands of me. No, you're here to love me, and to teach me what it is to love.

Teach me, Beauty, teach me, all the days of my life and more.

Amen