Brief reflection on the alliance between the Church and the artists of all time

Art, expression of the beauty of faith

Since the early centuries of the Church, in addition to the symbolic representation of the Christian faith, art has played an important role in the formation of the faithful who lived mainly in a condition of illiteracy. Education was transmitted through the figurative arts in places of worship.

Over the centuries, the protagonists of the New and Old Testaments have constituted a very rich source of inspiration: the face of Christ, the Gospel scenes, the prophets, Golgotha, the Virgin and Child or the Virgin of Sorrows, the Saints… Talent and wisdom applied in shaping the material to elaborate figurative techniques to reproduce signs, symbols, scenes, scenographies, places of prayer and of religious life. A complex, articulated and extraordinary work producing the transmission of the Gospel.

Therefore, Christian art is capable of elevating the soul, of constituting a point of contact with the Divine, of evoking the mystery by allowing its contemplation starting from beauty. The beauty of the utmost good: Jesus Christ, Icon of sublime beauty.

Dostoevsky says that humanity can live without science, it can live without bread, but only without beauty it could no longer live, because there would be nothing more to do in the world.

Beauty strikes man, fills him with new hope, gives him the courage to fully experience the unique gift of existence. This beauty evidently does not consist in a mere aestheticism, but in a pure and authentic feeling, capable of revealing the presence of God.

Pope Paul VI defined artists as those who by Christian vocation helped the Church. With the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, on December 8, 1965, he addressed a message to the artists stating that “The world we live in needs beauty in order not to darken in despair. Beauty, like truth, is what puts joy in men’s hearts, it is the precious fruit that resists the wear and tear of time, which unites generations and joins them in admiration. And this thanks to your hands”. And he exhorted all artists to bear this great responsibility: “Do not refuse to put your talent at the service of divine truth! Do not close your spirit to the breath of the Holy Spirit!”.

The same awareness with which Pope Wojtyla, on April 4, 1999, in an extraordinary Letter to the Artists, exhorted vigorously and forcefully the need to recover “a fruitful alliance” between the Gospel and art, to renew a relationship that has failed in the modern and contemporary period.

And precisely in connection with John Paul II, Pope Francis encouraged the peculiar evangelizing mission that belongs to artists: “In the expression of your art, have at heart also to testify that believing in Jesus Christ and following him” is not only a true and just, but also a beautiful thing, capable of filling life with a new splendour and profound joy, even in the midst of trials” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium, 167). The Church is counting on you to make the ineffable Beauty of God’s love perceptible and to allow everyone to discover the beauty of being loved by God”.

So let us pray so that Christian truth and art can resume this dialogue, to continue manifesting the world the beauty of faith.

 Paolo Abis and Germana Dolce