Art & Beauty

While St. Benedict is silent on the subject of contemplating art, the 1500+ year history of Benedictine monasticism has borne out the fact that art and beauty are very much at home with the monk and the monastery. Perhaps it is because, like the architecture of our monastery, art can make the invisible visible and point us to the infinite. Our own monastery walls are covered with works of art that are always there as an invitation to enter into what the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls “the mysterious encounter known as prayer” (CCC 2567). The artistic genius gives shape and form to this encounter and so helps us more readily stand in awe before the mystery of God.

For this reason throughout the booklet you will find the frescoes of Giotto di Bondone (1266-1337), especially drawn from his cycle on the life of Christ on the walls of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy. The genius of Giotto expresses that mysterious meeting of heaven and earth revealed in the Incarnation when God, the inexpressible beyond which our hearts long for, became flesh, became one of us and so became touchable, knowable. In Giotto’s faces and figures the sublime sweetness and grace of heaven and the deep pathos of our human experience become one.

This is also why in the resources below we have a link to a pdf booklet of meditations on three different works of music which plumb the depths of the Paschal Mystery: Mozart’s Requiem, De Victoria’s Tenebrae Responsories, and Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. The meditations are from Servant of God Luigi Giussani, an Italian priest who was known for his appreciation of art and beauty as a privileged place to encounter Christ. He wrote,

I began to feel enthralled by this music that seems — and often is — always the same, as a continuous repetition. And yet one never tires of it, because it fathoms the horizon of the soul and the heart, filling them with light and warmth, as De Victoria’s Christian heart must have been when he wrote these Responsories for Holy Week.

SUGGESTIONS:

• Art: Pay attention to the paintings in this booklet:

• Look at the details in each painting. Look at the faces, the hands, the gestures in each. What do they show?

What do they point to? What invisible reality does it make visible? • Music: Read the meditation from the “Music and Meditations for Holy Week” pdf booklet out loud beforehand.

Then listen in silence in one sitting, away from distractions, paying attention to the words and the music, using the commentary and art in the video to help you enter into it more. Here are links to recommended videos. • Wednesday: Listen to Mozart’s Requiem. • Holy Thursday: Listen to De Victoria’s Tenebrae Responsories. • Holy Saturday: Listen to Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater.