Living Beauty

The Christian mystery, celebrated in the Roman Catholic liturgy, is a sensible mystery, and calls out for artistic expression.Living Beauty explores the Christian mystery and points to the need for a liturgical aesthetic as a means to encounter the divine mystery. A liturgical aesthetic gives an account of Christian worship in terms of a new set of categories that includes divine beauty, a theology of sensibility, and the new notion of a unitive revelatory experience.

The Christian mystery, celebrated in the Roman Catholic liturgy, is a sensible mystery, and calls out for artistic expression.Living Beauty explores the Christian mystery and points to the need for a liturgical aesthetic as a means to encounter the divine mystery. A liturgical aesthetic gives an account of Christian worship in terms of a new set of categories that includes divine beauty, a theology of sensibility, and the new notion of a unitive revelatory experience. These categories help to reveal the aesthetic dimensions of the Church's watershed document on the liturgySacrosanctum Concilium.

The Church today stands in need of a new conversation on the aesthetic dimension of the liturgy and the role of the arts. Contrary to common opinion, the arts provide more than an environment or mere extrinsic ornamentation for the liturgy; they are intrinsic to the very nature of liturgy. They provide the means of being sanctified in the encounter with divine beauty that is the mystery of Christian worship. Artistic expression enables the worshiping community to receive the divine mystery in beauty.

1 Introduction
2This Blessed Mess, Scirghi;A Sensible Mystery, García-Rivera
3Something Beautiful for God, Scirghi;In Whom we live and move and have our being, García-Rivera
4It is right to give God thanks and praise, Scirghi;The Glory of the Lord, García-Rivera
5Go in peace…then what?, Scirghi;Do this in memory of me, García-Rivera
6 Conclusion