Dear Cardinals,
Brother Bishops and Priests,
Distinguished Artists,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
With great joy I welcome you to this solemn place, so rich in
art and in history. I cordially greet each and every one of you
and I thank you for accepting my invitation. At this gathering I
wish to express and renew the Church's friendship with the world
of art, a friendship that has been strengthened over time;
indeed Christianity from its earliest days has recognized the
value of the arts and has made wise use of their varied language
to express her unvarying message of salvation. This friendship
must be continually promoted and supported so that it may be
authentic and fruitful, adapted to different historical periods
and attentive to social and cultural variations. Indeed, this is
the reason for our meeting here today. I am deeply grateful to
Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Pontifical
Council for Culture and of the Pontifical Commission for the
Cultural Patrimony of the Church, and likewise to his officials,
for promoting and organizing this meeting, and I thank him for
the words he has just addressed to me. I greet the Cardinals,
the Bishops, the priests and the various distinguished
personalities present. I also thank the Sistine Chapel Choir for
their contribution to this gathering. Today's event is focused
on you, dear and illustrious artists, from different countries,
cultures and religions, some of you perhaps remote from the
practice of religion, but interested nevertheless in maintaining
communication with the Catholic Church, in not reducing the
horizons of existence to mere material realities, to a reductive
and trivializing vision. You represent the varied world of the
arts and so, through you, I would like to convey to all artists
my invitation to friendship, dialogue and cooperation.
Some significant anniversaries occur around this time. It is ten
years since the Letter to Artists by my venerable Predecessor,
the Servant of God Pope John Paul II. For the first time, on the
eve of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, the Pope, who was an
artist himself, wrote a Letter to artists, combining the
solemnity of a pontifical document with the friendly tone of a
conversation among all who, as we read in the initial
salutation, "are passionately dedicated to the search for new
'epiphanies' of beauty". Twenty-five years ago the same Pope
proclaimed Blessed Fra Angelico the patron of artists,
presenting him as a model of perfect harmony between faith and
art. I also recall how on 7 May 1964, forty-five years ago, in
this very place, an historic event took place, at the express
wish of Pope Paul VI, to confirm the friendship between the
Church and the arts. The words that he spoke on that occasion
resound once more today under the vault of the Sistine Chapel
and touch our hearts and our minds. "We need you," he said. "We
need your collaboration in order to carry out our ministry,
which consists, as you know, in preaching and rendering
accessible and comprehensible to the minds and hearts of our
people the things of the spirit, the invisible, the ineffable,
the things of God himself. And in this activity ... you are
masters. It is your task, your mission, and your art consists in
grasping treasures from the heavenly realm of the spirit and
clothing them in words, colours, forms -- making them
accessible." So great was Paul VI's esteem for artists that he
was moved to use daring expressions. "And if we were deprived of
your assistance," he added, "our ministry would become faltering
and uncertain, and a special effort would be needed, one might
say, to make it artistic, even prophetic. In order to scale the
heights of lyrical expression of intuitive beauty, priesthood
would have to coincide with art." On that occasion Paul VI made
a commitment to "re-establish the friendship between the Church
and artists", and he invited artists to make a similar, shared
commitment, analyzing seriously and objectively the factors that
disturbed this relationship, and assuming individual
responsibility, courageously and passionately, for a newer and
deeper journey in mutual acquaintance and dialogue in order to
arrive at an authentic "renaissance" of art in the context of a
new humanism.
That historic encounter, as I mentioned, took place here in this
sanctuary of faith and human creativity. So it is not by chance
that we come together in this place, esteemed for its
architecture and its symbolism, and above all for the frescoes
that make it unique, from the masterpieces of Perugino and
Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Cosimo Rosselli, Luca Signorelli and
others, to the Genesis scenes and the Last Judgement of
Michelangelo Buonarroti, who has given us here one of the most
extraordinary creations in the entire history of art. The
universal language of music has often been heard here, thanks to
the genius of great musicians who have placed their art at the
service of the liturgy, assisting the spirit in its ascent
towards God. At the same time, the Sistine Chapel is remarkably
vibrant with history, since it is the solemn and austere setting
of events that mark the history of the Church and of mankind.
Here as you know, the College of Cardinals elects the Pope; here
it was that I myself, with trepidation but also with absolute
trust in the Lord, experienced the privileged moment of my
election as Successor of the Apostle Peter.
Dear friends, let us allow these frescoes to speak to us today,
drawing us towards the ultimate goal of human history. The Last
Judgement, which you see behind me, reminds us that human
history is movement and ascent, a continuing tension towards
fullness, towards human happiness, towards a horizon that always
transcends the present moment even as the two coincide. Yet the
dramatic scene portrayed in this fresco also places before our
eyes the risk of man's definitive fall, a risk that threatens to
engulf him whenever he allows himself to be led astray by the
forces of evil. So the fresco issues a strong prophetic cry
against evil, against every form of injustice. For believers,
though, the Risen Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life. For
his faithful followers, he is the Door through which we are
brought to that "face-to-face" vision of God from which
limitless, full and definitive happiness flows. Thus
Michelangelo presents to our gaze the Alpha and the Omega, the
Beginning and the End of history, and he invites us to walk the
path of life with joy, courage and hope. The dramatic beauty of
Michelangelo's painting, its colours and forms, becomes a
proclamation of hope, an invitation to raise our gaze to the
ultimate horizon. The profound bond between beauty and hope was
the essential content of the evocative Message that Paul VI
addressed to artists at the conclusion of the Second Vatican
Ecumenical Council on 8 December 1965: "To all of you," he
proclaimed solemnly, "the Church of the Council declares through
our lips: if you are friends of true art, you are our friends!"
And he added: "This world in which we live needs beauty in order
not to sink into despair. Beauty, like truth, brings joy to the
human heart, and is that precious fruit which resists the
erosion of time, which unites generations and enables them to be
one in admiration. And all this through the work of your hands .
. . Remember that you are the custodians of beauty in the
world."
Unfortunately, the present time is marked, not only by negative
elements in the social and economic sphere, but also by a
weakening of hope, by a certain lack of confidence in human
relationships, which gives rise to increasing signs of
resignation, aggression and despair. The world in which we live
runs the risk of being altered beyond recognition because of
unwise human actions which, instead of cultivating its beauty,
unscrupulously exploit its resources for the advantage of a few
and not infrequently disfigure the marvels of nature. What is
capable of restoring enthusiasm and confidence, what can
encourage the human spirit to rediscover its path, to raise its
eyes to the horizon, to dream of a life worthy of its vocation
-- if not beauty? Dear friends, as artists you know well that
the experience of beauty, beauty that is authentic, not merely
transient or artificial, is by no means a supplementary or
secondary factor in our search for meaning and happiness; the
experience of beauty does not remove us from reality, on the
contrary, it leads to a direct encounter with the daily reality
of our lives, liberating it from darkness, transfiguring it,
making it radiant and beautiful.
Indeed, an essential function of genuine beauty, as emphasized
by Plato, is that it gives man a healthy "shock", it draws him
out of himself, wrenches him away from resignation and from
being content with the humdrum -- it even makes him suffer,
piercing him like a dart, but in so doing it "reawakens" him,
opening afresh the eyes of his heart and mind, giving him wings,
carrying him aloft. Dostoevsky's words that I am about to quote
are bold and paradoxical, but they invite reflection. He says
this: "Man can live without science, he can live without bread,
but without beauty he could no longer live, because there would
no longer be anything to do to the world. The whole secret is
here, the whole of history is here." The painter Georges Braque
echoes this sentiment: "Art is meant to disturb, science
reassures." Beauty pulls us up short, but in so doing it reminds
us of our final destiny, it sets us back on our path, fills us
with new hope, gives us the courage to live to the full the
unique gift of life. The quest for beauty that I am describing
here is clearly not about escaping into the irrational or into
mere aestheticism.
Too often, though, the beauty that is thrust upon us is illusory
and deceitful, superficial and blinding, leaving the onlooker
dazed; instead of bringing him out of himself and opening him up
to horizons of true freedom as it draws him aloft, it imprisons
him within himself and further enslaves him, depriving him of
hope and joy. It is a seductive but hypocritical beauty that
rekindles desire, the will to power, to possess, and to dominate
others, it is a beauty which soon turns into its opposite,
taking on the guise of indecency, transgression or gratuitous
provocation. Authentic beauty, however, unlocks the yearning of
the human heart, the profound desire to know, to love, to go
towards the Other, to reach for the Beyond. If we acknowledge
that beauty touches us intimately, that it wounds us, that it
opens our eyes, then we rediscover the joy of seeing, of being
able to grasp the profound meaning of our existence, the Mystery
of which we are part; from this Mystery we can draw fullness,
happiness, the passion to engage with it every day. In this
regard, Pope John Paul II, in his Letter to Artists, quotes the
following verse from a Polish poet, Cyprian Norwid: "Beauty is
to enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up" (no. 3). And
later he adds: "In so far as it seeks the beautiful, fruit of an
imagination which rises above the everyday, art is by its nature
a kind of appeal to the mystery. Even when they explore the
darkest depths of the soul or the most unsettling aspects of
evil, the artist gives voice in a way to the universal desire
for redemption" (no. 10). And in conclusion he states: "Beauty
is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence" (no. 16).
These ideas impel us to take a further step in our reflection.
Beauty, whether that of the natural universe or that expressed
in art, precisely because it opens up and broadens the horizons
of human awareness, pointing us beyond ourselves, bringing us
face to face with the abyss of Infinity, can become a path
towards the transcendent, towards the ultimate Mystery, towards
God. Art, in all its forms, at the point where it encounters the
great questions of our existence, the fundamental themes that
give life its meaning, can take on a religious quality, thereby
turning into a path of profound inner reflection and
spirituality. This close proximity, this harmony between the
journey of faith and the artist's path is attested by countless
artworks that are based upon the personalities, the stories, the
symbols of that immense deposit of "figures" -- in the broad
sense -- namely the Bible, the Sacred Scriptures. The great
biblical narratives, themes, images and parables have inspired
innumerable masterpieces in every sector of the arts, just as
they have spoken to the hearts of believers in every generation
through the works of craftsmanship and folk art, that are no
less eloquent and evocative.
In this regard, one may speak of a via pulchritudinis, a path of
beauty which is at the same time an artistic and aesthetic
journey, a journey of faith, of theological enquiry. The
theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar begins his great work entitled
The Glory of the Lord -- a Theological Aesthetics with these
telling observations: "Beauty is the word with which we shall
begin. Beauty is the last word that the thinking intellect dares
to speak, because it simply forms a halo, an untouchable crown
around the double constellation of the true and the good and
their inseparable relation to one another." He then adds:
"Beauty is the disinterested one, without which the ancient
world refused to understand itself, a word which both
imperceptibly and yet unmistakably has bid farewell to our new
world, a world of interests, leaving it to its own avarice and
sadness. It is no longer loved or fostered even by religion."
And he concludes: "We can be sure that whoever sneers at her
name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past -- whether
he admits it or not -- can no longer pray and soon will no
longer be able to love." The way of beauty leads us, then, to
grasp the Whole in the fragment, the Infinite in the finite, God
in the history of humanity. Simone Weil wrote in this regard:
"In all that awakens within us the pure and authentic sentiment
of beauty, there, truly, is the presence of God. There is a kind
of incarnation of God in the world, of which beauty is the sign.
Beauty is the experimental proof that incarnation is possible.
For this reason all art of the first order is, by its nature,
religious." Hermann Hesse makes the point even more graphically:
"Art means: revealing God in everything that exists." Echoing
the words of Pope Paul VI, the Servant of God Pope John Paul II
restated the Church's desire to renew dialogue and cooperation
with artists: "In order to communicate the message entrusted to
her by Christ, the Church needs art" (no. 12); but he
immediately went on to ask: "Does art need the Church?" --
thereby inviting artists to rediscover a source of fresh and
well-founded inspiration in religious experience, in Christian
revelation and in the "great codex" that is the Bible.
Dear artists, as I draw to a conclusion, I too would like to
make a cordial, friendly and impassioned appeal to you, as did
my Predecessor. You are the custodians of beauty: thanks to your
talent, you have the opportunity to speak to the heart of
humanity, to touch individual and collective sensibilities, to
call forth dreams and hopes, to broaden the horizons of
knowledge and of human engagement. Be grateful, then, for the
gifts you have received and be fully conscious of your great
responsibility to communicate beauty, to communicate in and
through beauty! Through your art, you yourselves are to be
heralds and witnesses of hope for humanity! And do not be afraid
to approach the first and last source of beauty, to enter into
dialogue with believers, with those who, like yourselves,
consider that they are pilgrims in this world and in history
towards infinite Beauty! Faith takes nothing away from your
genius or your art: on the contrary, it exalts them and
nourishes them, it encourages them to cross the threshold and to
contemplate with fascination and emotion the ultimate and
definitive goal, the sun that does not set, the sun that
illumines this present moment and makes it beautiful.
Saint Augustine, who fell in love with beauty and sang its
praises, wrote these words as he reflected on man's ultimate
destiny, commenting almost ante litteram on the Judgement scene
before your eyes today: "Therefore we are to see a certain
vision, my brethren, that no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor
the heart of man conceived: a vision surpassing all earthly
beauty, whether it be that of gold and silver, woods and fields,
sea and sky, sun and moon, or stars and angels. The reason is
this: it is the source of all other beauty" (In 1 Ioannis, 4:5).
My wish for all of you, dear artists, is that you may carry this
vision in your eyes, in your hands, and in your heart, that it
may bring you joy and continue to inspire your fine works. From
my heart I bless you and, like Paul VI, I greet you with a
single word: arrivederci!
[The Pope greeted the artists in various languages. In English,
he said:]
Dear friends, thank you for your presence here today. Let the
beauty that you express by your God-given talents always direct
the hearts of others to glorify the Creator, the source of all
that is good. God's blessings upon you all!
© Copyright 2009 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana
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