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When beauty is neglected, we come to expect less from the world. The effects are visible in our cities and museums: galleries full of art meant to provoke rather than inspire; architecture driven by function rather than form.
As Annette Bergeon, CEO at Endow, observed, “There seems to be an assault on beauty in our culture. Art is getting ugly—think of urinals in museums or soulless buildings. We used to have gorgeous architecture, and now so much feels chaotic and devoid of harmony.”
The consequences of this neglect have the potential to touch our spiritual lives. When sensitivity to beauty fades, we lose a deeply human way of recognizing God’s daily presence.
Yet hunger for beauty persists. It rises from within on its own, pointing to an order we did not invent and cannot fully explain.
How Beauty Draws Us Toward God
Pope St. John Paul II understood this dynamic well. In his Letter to Artists (1999), he writes, “Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savour life and to dream of the future.”
Beauty has a way of pulling us outside ourselves, stirring desire we may not yet have words for. Terri Sue Monark, Director of Content at Endow, describes how encountering genuine beauty can shift one’s awareness to quiet moments of grace. “It makes us pause, take a breath, reflect, and we see the world differently,” she said.
Jody C. Benson, author of Endow’s study on Letter to Artists, notes that John Paul II’s writings also teach us how to receive beauty. “Beauty matters because it confronts us with the fact that our lives are imbued with meaning and purpose,” she said. “God calls us in very particular ways to participate with Him in creating beautiful things with our lives and with the mission He has called us to.”
When beauty is distorted or abandoned, however, that attraction can grow faint or disappear altogether. As Bergeon put it, “You can almost understand the assault on beauty as a diabolical effort to separate human beings from the divine.”
When Beauty Lost Its Value
The 2009 BBC documentary Why Beauty Matters opens with British philosopher Sir Roger Scruton reflecting on a time before 1930 when poetry, art, and music were widely understood to be ordered toward beauty, a value he describes “as important as truth and goodness.”
During the twentieth century, Scruton observed, beauty gradually gave way to novelty. “Art increasingly aimed to disturb and to break moral taboos. It is not beauty but originality however achieved and at whatever moral cost that won the prizes,” he said.
Scruton argued that in making originality the aim, art became a distraction stripped of much of its power to move us. “The absence of beauty is a loss that could result in someone not experiencing the pull to the divine that God intended,” Bergeon explained.
Becoming Attentive
Beauty faces quieter threats as well. Benson names acedia as one of the more subtle challenges. Often translated as sloth, she explains that it is far more insidious. “It leads us to despair of all things of God…it cuts off our ability to contemplate the good and our ultimate purpose, which is communion with God.”
Against this detachment, Benson says, reading and studying Letter to Artists has a practical effect. “It orders my day, orders my life, toward what really matters.”
Encounters with genuine beauty interrupt acedia’s pull, and in doing so, interrupt our habits long enough to reconsider what we’re living for. “In those moments, something is given, and we leave changed,” Bergeon said.
A Letter That Still Speaks to Us
More than 25 years later, Letter to Artists continues to speak with urgency. John Paul II describes its purpose:
In writing this Letter, I intend to follow the path of the fruitful dialogue between the Church and artists which has gone on unbroken through two thousand years of history, and which still, at the threshold of the Third Millennium, offers rich promise for the future.
Throughout the letter is the invitation to see creativity as part of every human vocation, and not as a specialized skill reserved for artists alone.
“It’s a poetic letter by John Paul II, who was himself a poet and a Renaissance soul. He doesn’t start by defining artists as painters or poets; he begins with Genesis—who God is, who we are, and that we’re made in His image,” Benson explained. “It’s a universal call to live in shared life with the Divine Artist.”
By linking beauty to who we are and how God created us, Letter to Artists affirms that beauty helps shape how we live. Practices such as Visio Divina, a contemplative tradition of praying with sacred art, move our attention toward beauty rather than distraction.
“Sacred art can draw out meaning through its beauty and the symbolism embedded in it,” Benson said. “We’re reviving an ancient tradition where sacred art was part of prayer, moving beyond beauty as a ‘scroll on Instagram’ to its deeper purpose.”
That meaning can surface unexpectedly. Before becoming Catholic, Monark recalled her encounter with Michelangelo’s Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. “It was one of those moments that I couldn’t explain. Reading the writings of JPII finally helped me understand that response,” she said.
Choose Beauty
John Paul II speaks about beauty as essential to the human spirit.
“He’s encouraging us—women especially—to demand beauty in our homes, our lives, our relationships,” Bergeon said. “Don’t settle, even if our modern culture calls it wasteful or too expensive. Beauty draws us to God. Its absence is a loss.”
Rooted in our human identity, his words redirect attention from accumulating achievements to being present in our daily lives. He reminds us that every person bears the imprint of the Creator, and that being attentive to beauty gives life its depth; it is itself a life-giving, spiritual practice.
“Beauty stirs our hearts and minds, turning our gaze toward God,” Monark said. “When we receive beauty as a gift and respond with creativity, we honor our Creator and become a living work of art that draws others to Him.”
Author’s Note: Women curious about how beauty can become a path to holiness are invited to explore Pope Saint John Paul II’s Letter to Artists through Endow’s study, which draws them more deeply into God’s presence through gifts of creativity and vocation. The study is available for home, parish, and virtual groups at endowgroups.org.
Photo by Tamara Harhai on Unsplash
