Via Pulchritudinis: On the Relationship Between Beauty and Healing in Pastoral Practice

In 2006, the Pontifical Council for Culture in its plenary assembly recorded the importance of “via pulchritudinis” (the way of beauty) for the transmission of faith in Christ through a pastoral approach. In doing so the Council called to attention the challenges of our cultures, notably religious indifference and lack of belief.¹ Subsequently, this thread of thought was strengthened and elucidated by Pope Benedict XVI, when he pointed to the fact that the Church is a witness to the beauty of the faith, while also being a guardian of the truth of the Gospel. It is this very witness that, among other things, makes the Church a conscientious and committed guardian of world culture and the arts.² It is in this world culture that the Church carries out her mission while being cognizant of culture as an evolving facet of human life and talent. It is this cognizance that allows the offer of the healing light of the Gospel of Christ, through pastoral dialogue and mutual interaction.

To all pastors of souls, and to all who have healing sensitivities as an aspect of their Christian mission, it should be evident that the Church works diligently for the cultivation of theological virtues and the flourishing of human beings across all contexts. She does so informed by Christian anthropology, to enable the full realization of the person’s potential. The pastoral work is hence fundamentally restorative. Priests entrusted with the pastoral care of souls have a beautiful, splendid, and extraordinary task at hand.

Care of souls, a central mission, requires a perpetual willingness to be present to the human reality. This is of course easier said than done. There exist many impediments to the genuine care of souls, most fundamentally the brokenness of the human person, who is often wary of the demands of life, and even wounded by the daily challenges s/he faces. This could be more so in some places and for some people more than others. In any case, it is a reality pastors face. Compassionate listening, wisdom and prudence, unconditional friendship, and prayerful presence are essential aspects of providing pastoral care and healing. While this is a formidable challenge, the Church makes available to the priest the gifts she has to offer (e.g. sacraments, sacramentals, canonical prayers, her rich and coherent theology, and her persistent emphasis on mercy).

It is helpful to contextualize this to develop a “via pulchritudinis” model for our engagement, which is ultimately about the care of souls. This is reasonable, for in Catholic thinking, we recognize that beauty and healing both flow from the one God. It is hence not surprising that the Catechism mentions true artistic beauty as vocational. (Catechism of the Catholic Church §2502; hereafter CCC) This allows us to see that the beauty and cultural gifts of the Church are in some basic way united to our healing mission. The Church, which is a missionary in her being, is the cooperator of Christ, whom St. Basil calls the Divine Physician. Christ thus offers a medicinal vision for the journey of the fallen man.³ The saint also speaks of Christ’s healing touch reaching the depths of the human soul, restoring it to communion with God and fellow mankind.⁴ This is because true beauty is true, and the truth sets the human being free (from sin, while arming the person to face suffering in the here and now). (Cf. John 8:32) Freedom is hence fundamentally communion in and with Christ, despite the travails of temporal existence. Thus we may affirm, “with God, suffering never has the final word.”⁵ This means that the priest, rooted in the truth of his participation in Christ’s life, can use the many gifts he has at hand, to extend comfort, healing, and hope to those he ministers to. These gifts of the Church, which are indeed ultimately from God, offer a way to the beautiful, thus allowing for a participation in the life of God.

Beauty in creation as a means of contemplation of the Divine

The people we deal with, and the sacred objects the Church gives for pastoral ministry, are part of a created order, which is good (Cf. Genesis 1:31). Catholic tradition has an emphatically positive teaching about creaturely existence, for creatures are the work of God. The human person is created Imago Dei (Genesis 1:27), and s/he bears a special place within creation. The human person, as the Image of God, can participate in the splendor and beauty of God in a particular and special way. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

All creatures bear a certain resemblance to God, most especially man, created in the image and likeness of God. The manifold perfections of creatures — their truth, their goodness, their beauty — all reflect the infinite perfection of God. Consequently, we can name God by taking his creatures’ perfections as our starting point, “for from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator.” (CCC §41)

This teaching points to the fact that the human person’s ultimate being is fed through the mystery of incarnation. This makes the human being a potential icon of Christ! We are after all the branches of the vine (Cf. John 15:1–4). The priest undoubtedly is called to be an icon of Christ, and he can certainly be so through his ministry. Jesus calls people he meets to a love that heals and makes complete our existence. The priest through his ministry plays a very essential and even sacrificial role in this encounter with Christ. The priests who chose tireless action in service of mankind during COVID-19 times offer a fitting reminder of this sacrificial character of their calling. The Baptismal calling, strengthened even further by Confirmation, and then the ministerial priesthood, inevitably means that to be a pastor of souls is a ministry that involves life-giving love and sacrifice. We would do well to remember Pope Francis’ catechetics on the priesthood during the COVID pandemic. He said:

I cannot let this Mass pass without mentioning the priests. Priests who offer their lives for the Lord, priests who are servants. In recent days, more than 60 have died here in Italy, in the care of the sick in hospitals, and also with doctors, nurses . . . They are “the saints next door,” priests who gave their lives by serving.

And I think of those who are far away. Today I received a letter from a priest, chaplain from a distant prison, in which he tells of how he lives this Holy Week with the prisoners. A Franciscan.

Priests who go far to bring the Gospel and die there. A bishop said that the first thing he did, when he arrived in these mission posts, was to go to the cemetery, to the grave of the priests who lost their lives there, young, by the local plague [local diseases]. They were not prepared, they had no antibodies. No one knows their names. Anonymous priests.⁶

Christian distinctiveness lies in the call to self-sacrifice for the Lord and others, mirroring the inner life of the Triune God. This sacrificial life made possible through participation in the Church’s offerings, is about recapitulation in and through Christ. It infuses existence with purpose and offers hope in all circumstances. The sacraments, prayers, and teachings of the Church reveal the interconnectedness of creation and offer eschatological joy, communicating the infinite goodness and beauty of God. The Augustinian contemplation of the beauty of creation as a manifestation of God’s wisdom and goodness acknowledges beauty’s transformative power to awaken souls to deeper communion with God.⁷ Encountering beauty thus can become a pathway to personal communion with Christ in a pastoral context.

Pastoral work recognizes humanity’s innate desire for the transcendent, reflecting our creation in God’s image and our quest for union with Him. This work is fundamentally rooted in Christ, utilizes the Church’s sacraments, prayers, teachings, and cultural expressions to bring forth explicit and implicit beauty to those ministered to.

Sacramentals can be particularly useful in day-to-day interactions, for:

“ . . . These are sacred signs which bear a resemblance to the sacraments. They signify effects, particularly of a spiritual nature, which are obtained through the intercession of the Church. By them, men are disposed to receive the chief effect of the sacraments, and various occasions in life are rendered holy.” (CCC §1667)

Sacramentals’ symbolic meanings and the Church’s promises may be conveyed through culturally relevant allegories and parables, elevating minds and healing hearts. Pastoral care, modeled after Christ’s ministry, addresses the holistic person — body and spirit — enabling encounters with Christ amid brokenness. Troubles become opportunities for divine encounter, echoing Christ’s role as a healer of souls. We have a special role to play, for “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.” (Mathew 9:12) The pastor is to be a physician of souls and a minister of beauty, hope, and love! This is in line with Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, wherein he writes:

“Every expression of true beauty can thus be acknowledged as a path leading to an encounter with the Lord Jesus. This has nothing to do with fostering an aesthetic relativism which would downplay the inseparable bond between truth, goodness, and beauty, but rather a renewed esteem for beauty as a means of touching the human heart and enabling the truth and goodness of the Risen Christ to radiate within it. If, as Saint Augustine says, we love only that which is beautiful, the incarnate Son, as the revelation of infinite beauty, is supremely lovable and draws us to himself with bonds of love.”⁸

The call to beauty and love in our rapidly evolving context

The Church, as a vessel of the Divine Physician and harbinger of beauty, embraces the Great Commission with unwavering love. Her love is the cornerstone of her transformative mission to bring hope to the world. Beauty, as a transcendental, is bound to God who is love (Cf. 1 John 4:16). Thus, beauty offers profound hope, and is intrinsically tied to the Church’s mission and the pilgrim journey of all mankind.

In regions with sparse Church presence, such as India, pastors face the formidable challenge of ministering amid rapidly shifting societal landscapes. This challenge is compounded by the pervasive issue of loneliness, now recognized as a pressing public health concern by the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO statistics reveal a staggering reality: 1 in 4 adults and 5–15% of adolescents worldwide grapple with the profound ache of isolation — a stark reminder of the urgent need for a well-informed and compassionate response.⁹

Against this backdrop, intentional engagement with beauty, a hallmark of Catholic praxis, can offer hope and healing. Beauty, deeply ingrained in the tapestry of Catholic anthropology, assumes a multifaceted role as a healing balm, offering solace and guidance even through stormy existential crises. Hence deliberate engagement with beauty not only enriches communal spaces but also fosters a sense of interconnectedness and belonging, nurturing the seeds of hope amid despair and hopelessness.

Drawing from my personal experience, it is evident that Catholic assurances have a profound impact on individuals navigating existential uncertainties. Across diverse backgrounds, individuals — both within and beyond the Christian fold — find solace in concepts such as guardian angels, God’s boundless love, and the intercession of saints. For those grappling with ambivalence toward matters of faith, the Church’s wisdom, when presented in the context of everyday life and balanced philosophy, serves as a conduit for transformative dialogue — a gateway through which divine grace flows, offering healing and consolation to weary souls.

In essence, the Church’s mission to embody the Divine Physician and propagate beauty transcends mere theological rhetoric; it is a manifestation of love and compassion, offering respite to the weary and hope to the downtrodden in a world fraught with uncertainty and despair.

Beauty, catechetics, and integral ecology  

The desire for healing that would ultimately result in everlasting restoration points to the human quest for fulfillment, redemption, and everlasting experience of beauty in God himself. St. Gregory of Nyssa, a Doctor of the Church, explores the connection between beauty and the quest for fulfillment in his treatise On the Soul and the Resurrection. He teaches that the human soul is inherently drawn to beauty as it seeks union with the divine. This is because “The Deity is in very substance Beautiful.” He further writes, “ . . . and thus the soul copies the life that is above, and is conformed to the peculiar features of the Divine nature; none of its habits are left to it except that of love, which clings by natural affinity to the Beautiful.”(10) Thus, an authentic encounter with beauty serves as a signpost on the journey toward spiritual wholeness, beckoning the soul toward its ultimate source. Hence the journey of healing truthfully undertaken is also a pilgrim journey toward a more elevated and beautiful existence. Catechetics in the context of life in the Church is an important contribution to this pilgrimage of the soul toward its ultimate source, who in substance is beautiful. Hence catechetics and the pursuit of beauty are intertwined, as Pope Francis pointed out in his Evangelii Gaudium.¹⁰

Catechetics, in the mind of the Pope, ought to be beautiful, splendid, and joyful! This is because “Christ is the ‘eternal Gospel’ (Rev 14:6); he ‘is the same yesterday and today and forever’ (Heb 13:8), yet his riches and beauty are inexhaustible.”¹¹ Beauty is hence essential to catechetics, an instructional approach to spiritual medicine. Hence catechetics is situational and must appeal not only to the intellect but also to stir affection, leading persons to seek comfort and communion with the source of all beauty — God Himself. Beauty is a gateway to the Communion of saints!

The Catholic tradition through the Triune God has inexhaustible beauty through its lively witness of faith in the lives of saints, sacraments and sacramentals, art, poetry, music, literature, and engagement with wider culture and scientific thought, which could offer meaning to a wide range of people. The pastor of souls could indeed depend on the treasures of the Church and reach the masses and work to be “all things to all people” (1 Corinthians 9:19–23). The aesthetic dimension also offers a window to experience God’s mercy and grace. This opens up spaces where wonder and awe are experienced within the scope of pastoral work; it is a way to restore richness in the lives of modern man.

Pope Francis emphasizes such an approach in Laudato Si. He encourages us to “keep” and “till” our natural, material, social, cultural, and human environments. Restoration and imbuement of beauty belong thus to all dimensions of human lives. The Pope even calls attention to the interconnectedness of all creation, and the need for ecological conversion, and thereby points to the complete healing of the human person — in his particular ecological context. In Laudato Si, he writes, “The universe unfolds in God, who fills it completely. Hence, there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dewdrop, in a poor person’s face.”¹²

This integral ecology model opens up a holistic and coherent worldview regarding the Church’s engagement with the care of souls, for human souls are embodied, and fundamentally relational. Humans relate to their environment and all beings around them. Thus, the Church is to be attentive to all aspects of human existence, for the experience of beauty could come through all of these aspects. No wonder then that Pope John Paul II recognized the importance of beauty to the Church’s mission when he wrote, “To communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art.”¹³ Thus even in pluralistic cultures and societies, perhaps the most effective instrument to be the “salt and the light” (cf. Matthew 5:13) would be through beauty presented appropriately and wisely so that it gives radiant hope to all those who come in contact with the Church. This could also be the Church’s way of cooperating with the rest of the world to develop solutions for public health concerns such as loneliness, and the loss of peace, hope, and harmony in human families and settlements.

Via pulchritudinis as a common human ground    

The human person yearns for everlasting beauty, which is found in God. Many theologians have associated beauty, in both nature and art, with the Holy Spirit. The contemplation of beauty opens up possibilities of engaging with the Church’s teachings on divine glory, inspiration, and even the eschatological form of the human person. Consider, for instance, the juxtaposition of three images: one of the Blessed Mother who together with St. Joseph formed the Holy Family, who also stands at the foot of the Cross mourning for her blameless son, and finally her assumption into heaven. She points mystically to all stations of human life — the beginning, the suffering and loss, and finally glory in Christ. This makes her an eschatological icon for all human beings, who find hope in Christ. Such a perception of life makes it possible to view all aspects of human life as being in contact with the transcendent. It gives every human situation, both joyful and dire and everything in between, a teleological import. This is a common human ground, ever open to beauty and hope, on which the pastors of souls stand and work. Human beings are hence not alone. They can draw upon the common wisdom and convictions of the Church, to offer the healing presence of God to all who seek help. Via pulchritudinis is then a common human ground on which the pastors of souls stand and work to bring hope and healing.

Conclusion

The via pulchritudinis approach integrates pastoral work with our shared response to beauty. This approach is indeed a conduit to the transcendent that has the potential to offer hope. Rooted in the Christocentric and sacramental worldview of Catholic tradition, beauty can become a potent tool in addressing contemporary societal challenges. Given the times we are in, and considering the caution of WHO, loneliness is to be taken note of as a particularly vexing problem for the modern man, who is likely in a post-nuclear family setting. Remarkably, both young people and adults seem troubled at unprecedented rates. The Church’s healing mission and cultural engagement thus needs to be integrated.

Contextualizing Church teachings sensitively offers healing, which aligns with the Christian mandate to be the “salt and light” of the world. This approach, centered on beauty as the transcendent, has the potential to be cross-confessional. It lends itself to a combination of compassionate listening, unconditional friendship, and several embodiments of beauty (including those from the Church). The Church’s sacramental worldview, interconnected cosmology, and Christian anthropology offer profound remedies to modern afflictions of the heart. Aligning with Pope Francis’ integral ecology program, pastors can become collaborators of beauty, and bring it into all aspects of human existence, thereby promoting an inherent harmony between care of souls and stewardship of beauty — thereby aiding the reflection on God’s eternal substance which is beautiful!