Beauty in Lent & Holy Week?

Many of our liturgically-minded priests, religious and laity may be confused by the title of this column. It seems to contradict the rubrics or guidelines of the liturgy. Rubrics, the sentences in red in the Ordo, suggest that during Lent and most especially during Holy Week anything that displays beauty like flowers, colors, images, joyful songs and instruments, etc. should be restrained and subdued. Why?

The holy season’s motif is one of respectful silence, intense meditation, feeling of sorrow and remorse evoked by the Lord’s passion and death. Here the symbolism is effected by the extreme horror and bloody ugliness of the cross.

The inspired authors of Holy Scriptures often used the literary genre called paradox, which is a seeming contradiction, to transmit God’s teaching. For instance, “…no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” (John 3:5) or “…unless a wheat grain falls into the earth and dies…” (John 12:24), etc.

On the Cross the beauty of God’s love can be perceived through the sharp nails piercing Christ’s hands and feet, the gaping wounds on his side, inhuman torture, intense thirst due to dehydration, horror of stabbing a dying Christ, the painful difficulty in breathing—all UGLINESS SUPREME!

The first person who saw this Godly Beauty was the Roman centurion. Touched by the light of faith this leader of the Roman gang that tortured Jesus, “standing in front of him, and had seen how he had died, said, ‘…In truth this man was the Son of God'” (Mark 15:39). He saw divinity in indignity!

Later the 11 Apostles, thousands of saints and martyrs down the centuries until now had been moved, captivated and fallen in love with the beauty of the Crucified Lord. Because of their deep faith the Cross is no longer a symbol of human ugliness but divine beauty! What a paradox!

Lent and Holy Week, when properly observed as the Church teaches, will bring about beautiful Christian Catholics. To them beauty would not be skin-deep but soul-deep—the beauty of character. That is why Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the famous Russian novelist, said in one of his novels, “It is only beauty that can save the world.”