Way of Beauty

In the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), Pope Francis speaks of the via pulchritudinis, Latin for “the way of beauty.” “Proclaiming Christ,” Francis says, “means showing that to believe in and to follow him is not only something right and true, but also something beautiful. . . . Every expression of true beauty can thus be acknowledged as a path leading to an encounter with the Lord Jesus.” Beauty—whether in the form of paintings, poetry, architecture, sculptures, music, or even the lives of the saints—has been and should continue to be a great means for the Church to proclaim the Gospel and evangelize. And whatever is beautiful in the culture—from a good baseball game to the music of Bob Dylan—can potentially open the nonreligious to the source of all beauty.

This book, based on Bishop Robert Barron’s talk at the 2018 Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, offers a brief tour of the way of beauty in a beautiful way, reflecting the very reality it describes. Whether these great works of art and concepts from the Church’s tradition are familiar to you or you’re experiencing them for the first time, these meditations underscore the power of the Catholic emphasis on the via pulchritudinis—and the crucial importance of that emphasis today.