Beauty in Ugliness

Is there such a thing? Impossible!, many will say. Is it a contradiction? No. It’s just something contrary, not really contradictory. What is really contradictory to Beauty is non-beauty, the denial or non existence of the thing we call beautiful.
Likewise non-ugliness is a contradiction to ugliness.

How about saying, ugliness is the opposite of beauty? I think this is possible. The reason is, because both the opposed and the oppositor exist; they don’t negate each other’s existence.
So, there can be beauty in ugliness. This can mean ugliness hiding, covering, enveloping beauty. When both are expressed this way, we have the word “paradox”, commonly understood as a ‘seeming’ contradiction. Actually it is opposition, and just seeming or looking like contradiction. Where and how can this be possible then?

I think it is possible only with human beings, not with non-humans, either animate or inanimate beings like animals and plants. The reason is, only the human mind and human will can make such an opposition – to hide beauty under cover of ugliness. There is an example, and many others.

TIME magazine of March 3, 2014 shows a beautiful photo of 18 year-old Analyn Pleado giving birth to her baby on the roadside of Tolosa town on January 11, 2014 amidst a drizzling rain barely 2 months after Yolanda struck the area. . The grassy, wet, dirty, smelly, uneven ground, uncomfortable and unsanitary lying bed for a painful delivery of a baby is definitely ugliness supreme. But the joyful love of Analyn and the awesome wonder of human birth is beauty supreme. But it is hidden in labor pains of a poor woman. And this mystery of inner form is perceptible only to those attuned to beauty.

If this is really possible and true among human beings, it can, by analogy, also be true with a Supernatural Being. So God, the Supreme Being, actually did it some two thousand years ago.
God in the Christ-form allowed His human form to be tortured, nailed to the wood of the cross, spat upon, stabbed and left hanging there naked and bloody till the last breath. Supreme ugliness! But God’s glory, synonym of beauty, shines out in magnificent splendor! But who can see such beauty?

Only those attuned to beauty, those whose hearts are pure and clean like those of little children. “Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God (Math. 5:8). Moral uncleanness or sin beclouds the eyes and obscures the sight. The ugliness on the cross – the piercing nails, the stabbing spear, the gaping wounds, the crimson red blood and the painful pricks of the thorny crown – are easily visible to the spiritually blind.

To be able to see the unsurpassable beauty of God’s love hidden in His ugly tortured body painfully suffering towards death is to have have faith, religious faith, that is, and, aided by grace, to feel its transforming power which moves, touches, fascinates and captivates the human heart. Thus filled with ecstatic delight, the person falls in love and wants to possess and be possessed by the beauty whose body writhes ugly in anguish and then breaths no more. Supreme, Mysterious Paradox of Divine Glory in the Glorious Crucified!

This is a good thought to ponder on this First Sunday of Lent.