Customer Reviews

The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty: Art, Sanctity, and the Truth of Catholicism

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This book is so rich, I felt spoiled to have read it. I boughtit because the reviews were so good, and I'm really glad I did. If youwonder what art has to do with spirituality, this book will carefully reveal it to you. It provides a wealth of information - each premise is carefully documented and supported. It ties together the experience and profundity of art (in worship, in creating art, etc.) with holiness. It was written from a Catholic perspective, but the rich traditions and thought underlying the message are for all Christians. What joyful reading... END

Every once in a while you read a book that inspires you from cover to cover. I couldn't put this book down because it was so well done and leads you on to reflect on the beauty of the Christian faith and it's practicality in the spiritual life. Mr.Saward has a good grasp on the connection between the beautiful and holy. I found it very readable and would recommend it to anyone who seeks to enrich their Christian faith.

I was recommended Saward's work as a preliminary text to introduce me to theological aesthetics before delving into the works of Hans Urs von Balthasar on beauty. It is a condensed development of a Theology of Art that is a testimony to the relationship between holiness and beauty. The theological is highly Thomistic and is constantly related to the beauty which is found in the Holy Ones of the Faith.

Saward's main development throughout the text is how beauty is always a reflection of holiness, for holiness is, at its core, a full harmony with God, letting the Radiance of the inner life of the Trinity shine through the holy one. By means of a variety of reflections, Saward considers those Holy Ones who are transparent to the beauty of God and reflects primarily on the different aspects of these beauties, particularly as found in Christ, The Eucharist, the Saints, The Virgin Mary, and the Martyrs. He always orders the beauty of the Holy Ones, as well as all of Creation, to the Holy God of all creation.

Saward's treatise serves as an important reminder to the power of Art insomuch as it works to the Glory of God, to the Glory of the Truth. Beauty is not removable from Truth and Goodness, but is an exposition of it, and a route thereto. By means of such Holiness, Art is lifted up to its summit and thus can purify an entire culture.

This is a beautiful exposition of the harmony between holiness and beauty. John Saward, a friend of mine, is a reflection of this great work. Read it.

This is an impassioned book by a man aghast at the loss of beauty in western cristendom, a loss crystallised by the iconclastic protestant reformation and continued with a vengeance since (but not because of) Vatican II in some parts of the Catholic world.

Fr Saward is transfixed by the Blessed Virgin, she who abases herself before the most High, with her Fiat, is herself honoured by cherubim and seraphim; St Michael, the Archangel, bows before her and proclaims throughout eternity with his angelic confreres: "blessed are thou amongst women".

For Fr Saward, a christianity without the blessed virgin cannot be orthodox and cannot be tender - it loses something, it loses a connection with she who gives our incarnate Christ, his human nature, she, who is the Theotokos. "All generations shall call me blessed"

Let me quote from his work to give an insight into this valuable work:

"the bible is an infinite forest of senses. The Holy Spirit. through the secondary casuality of the human authors, has planted a sacred wood of meaning within the bible, a wood whose rich foliage He opnes up in the Tradition of the Church. For [Fra Angelico], Catholic belief and worship are the natural environment for exegesis, the only guarantee of true objectivity (page 38 and 39).

"beauty is the splendour of all the transcendentals together" (page 48)

"The medeival artist had a job of work to do - for the glory of God and the good estate of the Church. He knew nothing of gallaries and salons, foppish art critics and fastidious collectors." (page 72)

"According to the Fathers, the Iconoclasts' rejection betrayed a low and unchrsitian view of matter; the totality of the material creation has been touched, and is thus objectively and in principle transfigured, by God the Son's taking of flesh from the Virgin and His rising in the flesh from the tomb" (page 91)

"The hypostatic union never comes to an end: what God took from the Virgin, He kept" (page 101)

According to st Thomas, even in this life, there is a transfiguration of our bodies through the grace of the Eucharist" (page 106)

"...true devotion to the Blessed Virgin is the irreplaceable key to the renewal of Christian culture, to the building up of a society of love. (page 114)

"there is only one human person whom He resembles in his Humanity, and that is His Virgin Mother" (page 123)

"He comes forth from an intact Virgin just as He rises from an intact tomb". Incarnation is not invasion" (page 129)

"the supreme revelation of the beauty of the Trinity take place in the crucified form of the Son" (page 139)

"there is no culture, then, without contemplative wonder at the beauty of being" (page 149)

"All womanhood is made radiant by the shining Theotokos" (page 151)

"Only throught he sacrificed flesh and blood of Christ in the Eucharist is man made capable of martyrdom" (page 181)