You Are Beautiful, Day 25.5

(This was supposed to be posted on Day 23, but because I'm forgetful and silly, I'm posting it now. My deepest apologies to its author, Madeleine. I didn't mean it!)


I remember a few summers ago sitting in the Newman Center after dinner, just two friends and me. Our debate about the Blessed Mother had reached a standstill-- if Mary was born without sin and unfailingly did the will of God during her life, did it then follow that she was the most beautiful woman ever, inside and out? Did Mary have to be the most externally beautiful woman ever if she was chosen as the mother of God? Would God have made a woman ordinary looking or even ugly to be the mother of his Son to make a point about interior beauty being invisible but paramount? We never reached a consensus-- the grinder in the kitchen sink had stopped working and we put our heads together to tackle instead the pressing matter of washing the dishes.

I was reminded of the “beautiful” Mary debate a few years later when I wrote a term paper for a course on eighteenth century literature about Tom Jones, investigating the close relationship between outward physical appearance and internal character that was assumed in the 1740s when Henry Fielding was writing the novel. Fielding’s point that people make judgments about other people’s characters based on physical appearance is still unfortunately more valid than it should be; but the modern reader feels perhaps rightly skeptical of Tom’s assurance that Sophia’s beauty will be enough to ensure his future fidelity, and incredulous that she accepts his reasoning after evidence to the contrary. For the purpose of Fielding’s narrative, however, Tom and Sophia are both the most attractive and the most internally “good” characters, for all their faults and missteps during the story.

So, if we are to accept Fielding’s point that “beauty” and “goodness” are somehow related, but we are to reject the idea that physical traits exclusively express the “goodness” of a person, where does this leave us on the beauty question? Does this mean that the “good” person, the person whose heart is in the right place even though their behavior might not always suggest so, is also, in spite of their mistakes, the most beautiful person?

Edmund Burke, eighteenth century political theorist and philosopher, can help us here. In his work On the Sublime and Beautiful, Burke observes that beauty is “a social quality... [beautiful people] inspire us with sentiments of tenderness and affection towards their persons; we like to have them near us, and we willingly enter into a kind of relation with them, unless we should have strong reasons to the contrary” (Pt. 1, Sect. X). But Burke comes up short when he tries to explain this, remarking, “But to what end, in many cases, this was designed, I am unable to discover... though we cannot perceive distinctly [why] this is, as [the wisdom of Providence] is not our wisdom, nor his ways our ways”(ibid).

But we have the answer-- a soul, created by God, and living to fulfill God’s will, is truly beautiful. To apply this to Burke’s words, people trying to live like Christ inspire us with sentiments of tenderness and affection towards their persons, we like to have these people near us, and we like to enter into relationships with them. The most beautiful person, then, is not necessarily the one whose outward appearance is the most pleasing, or even the one who is most internally “good.” The most beautiful person is the person who can say with the most confidence and conviction, with Our Lady, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

Burke also addresses the question of God’s wisdom. He’s right that we can never claim to understand the fullness of God’s wisdom. But one of my favorite books of the Bible is concerned with understanding and using the gift of God’s wisdom, spoken to us in the voice of King Solomon (and aptly titled, of course, the Book of Wisdom). It also speaks to us of beauty. “Therefore I prayed, and prudence was given me;” he says, “I pleaded and the spirit of Wisdom came to me,”

I preferred her to scepter and throne,

And deemed riches nothing in comparison with her,

nor did I liken any priceless gem to her;

Because all gold, in view of her, is a bit of sand,

and before her, silver is to be accounted mire.

Beyond health and beauty I loved her,

And I chose to have her rather than the light,

because her radiance never ceases.

Yet all good things together came to me with her,

and countless riches at her hands;

I rejoiced in them all, because Wisdom is their leader,

though I had not known that she is their mother. (Wisdom 7: 7-12).

We, too, should love wisdom “beyond health and beauty” because God’s wisdom is the source of these things. The “radiance” of God’s love “never ceases.” To love God is not just to have riches, temporal and spiritual, bestowed on us, but to know that He is the source of them. This knowledge, this wisdom, is what makes souls truly beautiful.

When do you feel most beautiful? When do you feel most able to magnify the Lord, to reflect the endless radiance of His love? I know that I feel most beautiful when I am serving others, whether it’s writing a letter to a relative who lost a son, or serving dinner at a homeless shelter, or even helping a lost tourist downtown find where they’re going. I feel most beautiful when I am using the talents God has given me to do something worthwhile, like getting a head start on my thesis research at the Library of Congress and taking notebooks of hand-written notes, going the extra mile at work and finding solutions to problems my boss doesn’t yet know about, or practicing music and trying to turn that talent into something others can enjoy.

At Christmastime last year, my boyfriend sat next to me on the piano bench while I was struggling through a difficult piece, and said quietly, “You look so beautiful when you are playing the piano.” It wasn’t because I was wearing nice clothes, or because it was a “good” hair day, and it wasn’t because it was his favorite song or that I was playing it particularly well. I think he said this because he saw God acting through me as I played the piano. I think, maybe, for a moment, my soul “magnified the Lord.”



Madeleine is a graduate student at University of Saskatchewan. When she's not in the library reading naval history journals, you can find her blogging about baseball, politics, God, and the adventures of an inside-the-beltway Washingtonian in Saskatoon at By Western Canadian Standards.