Rejoicing in the Works of the Lord: Beauty in the Franciscan Tradition

Franciscans and Beauty

9 fRanciscans and BeauTy “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new.”4 With these words,Augustine of Hippo captured his experience of conversion and discovery of God as Love beyond any he had ever known. Throughout his life’s journey, through trials and personal loss, through questioning and doubt, through the discovery of friendship and unselfish love, Augustine finally came to know himself as one loved with a divine Love that, quite simply, turned his life and his world upside down. After this experience, nothing was to be the same again. Augustine’s story, so beautifully recounted in his Confessions , has marked the history of Christian reflection upon the spiritual life as a journey of transformation into love. His writings have marked spiritual and theological reflections upon the order of love (ordo amoris), upon the divine nature as Beauty, and upon the creation as the harmonic whole that reveals the nature of God. For Augustine and those living within his spiritual tradition, human life is, quite simply, an ongoing pilgrimage . It is a journey back home, back to where we belong, to that loving embrace where at last we shall be surrounded by love and beauty. At that moment we shall take our place within a communion of lovers, where we shall experience our heart’s desire in a banquet of delight and a kingdom of peace. In this first chapter, we consider the vision of the founders and the legacy of wisdom inherited by the great masters of the intellectual tradition. As we shall see, they build upon the foundation of centuries of reflection by great minds and spiritual writers who preceded them. Among the most influential 4 Augustine, Confessions (New York: Penguin Classics, 1961), X, 27. Mary Beth inghaM 10 was Augustine of Hippo. Franciscans have a particular affinity for the Augustinian vision of transformation into love. Spiritual writers, theologians and philosophers of the tradition are profoundly influenced by Augustinian insights: by his focus on ordered loving, on the importance of self-discovery, on the centrality of divine generosity and creativity, and on the world as a place of exquisite beauty. The created order, itself beautiful, is SIGN of a deeper Beauty: God. Consequently, the tradition itself is overtly affective in its vision of the human person: Franciscans emphasize that the journey toward God is a via pulchritudinis, a pathway of beauty that integrates human emotions as well as human intellectual analysis and reflection. Franciscans see themselves and all persons as “restless hearts” longing for peace and love. Restless minds also reveal this deep longing, as Augustine’s questioning traced out his own way of pursuing his deepest desires. It is no wonder that Beauty, understood as the goal of all of human longing and the delight of our hearts should continually emerge within the tradition in three specific ways: as a cornerstone of reflection, as a guide to action, and as a medium of transformation. The vision of the founders The beauty of the created world and the beauty of God were central spiritual insights for Francis and Clare. Transformed by love, Francis’s life became a song of praise to his Beloved. Indeed , Francis saw beauty everywhere: in the simplest flower, in the poor, suffering Christ, in the leper, in the outcast, and in the stranger. At the end of his life, his Canticle of the Creatures offers a prime and exquisite testimony to his own journey toward the fullness of praise. Bonaventure’s Life of Francis (Legenda Major) describes the journey of the founder in terms that echo the methodological structure of his spiritual classic, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum (The Journey of the Mind to God). Aroused by everything to divine love, he rejoiced in all the works of the Lord’s hands FrancIscans and Beauty 11 And through their delightful display he rose into their life-giving reason and cause. In beautiful things he contuited Beauty itself and through his footprints impressed in things he followed his Beloved everywhere out of them all making for himself a ladder through which he could climb up to lay hold of him who is utterly desirable.5 Francis’s experience is emblematic of the human experience : he serves as the guide par excellence. As it did for him, the beauty of creation can guide each person toward the Creator. The lover advances as upon the rungs of a ladder, toward...