Beauty is a way to describe God, an idea that could lead to some interesting places, and even invigorate one’s relationship with the Lord, said Mark McInroy, associate professor of theology and associate chair of the Theology Department at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.
Mark McInroy
“If one were to think of God as beautiful, then one thing that would mean is that encounter with God, devoting oneself to God, is aesthetically charged,” he said, similar to experiencing great art or great music.
“We are just utterly entranced with the object of beauty,” McInroy said on the “Practicing Catholic” radio show debuting 9 p.m. Sept. 9 on Relevant Radio 1330 AM. “To think of God along those lines means that, among other things, perhaps on Sunday morning when it comes time to go to church, one doesn’t drag one’s heels out of obligation, but instead, one goes to church to seek that kind of encounter, that kind of reinvigorating, re-enlivening encounter with God.”
McInroy joined “Practicing Catholic” host Patrick Conley to discuss the idea of the theology of beauty.
Many encounters with beauty are enthusiastically shared, McInroy said, whether an incredible concert or art exhibit, or a hike “through the glories of a natural world.”
“We feel compelled to share it,” he said, describing its rich parallels for evangelism “because what it would mean is that we, in our own encounters with God or devotion to God, approach sharing that with others, with confidence. We approach it with the same kind of confidence that we would after experiencing the best concert we’ve ever heard in our lives.”
If people consider the relationship with God in that aesthetic manner, McInroy suggests, they would be more comfortable and eager to evangelize, “to share the good news.” “We might cease our hesitations that some of us sometimes experience and be really enthusiastic about sharing God’s word.”
On one hand, beauty is out there in the world, but it often takes “a certain kind of attunement” to encounter it, McInroy said. Sometimes beauty will “just bowl us over,” but other times it takes a stillness, a sensitivity and awareness to detect subtle things going on, he said.
Cultivating that aesthetic sensibility, becoming tuned in to the beauty in art can build awareness of subtleties that help people observe beauty in other settings, McInroy said. “I think this is a rich idea for the life of faith,” he said, which could bring glimpses of God in arenas that might otherwise be missed. “So there’s a carryover into the life of faith that I think benefits from instruction that one can find in the arts,” he said.
To learn more about how to cultivate beauty in one’s life and McInroy’s thoughts on whether beauty is subjective — and to hear the full interview, tune in to the “Practicing Catholic” show, which repeats at 1 p.m. Sept. 10 and 2 p.m. Sept. 11 on Relevant Radio 1330 AM.
Produced by Relevant Radio and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the latest show also includes interviews with Father Paul Hedman, parochial vicar of St. Peter in Forest Lake, who describes balancing his roles as priest and teacher; and Father Tom Margevicius, director of worship for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, who delivers his latest “Mass class” on preparation of the gifts and the eucharistic prayer.
Listen to interviews after they have aired:
Practicing Catholic on Spotify
Recent Comments