john on Beauty

We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to r...

I think the mistake most of us make about beauty is that we expect it to be pretty—to please us with its proportions, its balance, its harmony, its rhyme. If those are your requirements, I doubt I wil...

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

For the beauty of human love Brother, sister, parent, child. Friends on earth and friends above, For all gentle thoughts and mild; Lord of all, to thee we raise, This, our hymn of grateful praise...

We have been created and redeemed for the eternal ecstasy of an interpersonal immersion in the triune God, seeing infinite Beauty face to face.

How beautiful you appear to the angels, Lord Jesus, in the form of God, eternal, begotten before the daystar amid the splendors of heaven, “the radiant light of God’s glory and the perfect copy of his...

It was when I was happiest that I longed most. The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing to find the place where all the beauty came from.

Christ knew that by bread alone you cannot animate man. If there were no spiritual life, no ideal of beauty, man would waste away, die, go mad, kill himself or give himself to pagan fantasies. And as ...

Every cross adorning a church is in itself a sermon—a sermon proclaiming that if Christ can transform the Roman instrument of execution into a thing of beauty, there is hope that in Christ all things ...

The Christian gospel is rooted in language: God spoke a creation into being; our Savior was the Word made flesh. The poet is the person who uses words not primarily to convey information but to make a...

Each of us, Lord, has failed to fully observe your beauty. We fall in love with our own image and are left disappointed and alone. Please be faithful to us, Jesus, even when we turn from You. We...

May the Lord of love keep us all in peace, transform our conflict into the beauty of his grace, and give us joyful hearts to do his will. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. A...

From 1992 to 1995 the world witnessed one of the worst civil conflicts, the Bosnian War. Three factions, each tied to a religion (Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, and Muslim Bosniaks), began attacking...

Only the beautiful is loved . . . we cannot help loving what is beautiful.

When one has once fully entered the realm of Love, the world—no matter how imperfect—becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for Love.

You can’t, except in the lowest animal sense, be in love with a girl if you know (and keep on remembering) that all the beauties both of her person and of her character are a momentary and accidental ...

My mind is bent to tell of bodies changed into new forms.

Alexander Schmemann, the late priest who led a reform movement in Russian Orthodoxy, tells of a time when he was traveling on the subway in Paris, France, with his fiancée. At one stop an old and ugly...

“He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before—this sleek, sinuous, full-...

Over the triple doorways of the Cathedral of Milan, there are carvings. One features a beautiful wreath of roses, accompanied by the inscription: “All that pleases is but for a moment.” Another displa...

"God's joy," said by the Persian mystic Rumi, "moves from unmarked box to unmarked box, from cell to cell. As rain water down into flower bed. As roses up from ground. Now it looks ...

In the epic conclusion to the Narnia Chronicles, C.S. Lewis attempts to express the absolute joy that will come as our earthly lives come to an end and we are reunited with our God for all of eternity...

There is the great lesson of “Beauty and the Beast”; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable.

If I asked you the same question I asked my patient Aaron—“What do you want?”—and you could for a moment put aside the predictable anxiety that comes with it, I’m confident that at some point in your ...

Unsurprisingly, whenever we bring the topic of desire into view, our imaginations easily wander in the direction of sex, which can be as discomforting as it is arousing—but it is certainly not irrelev...

As for Christians, well, we really have just one thing going for us. We have publicly declared… that we are desperately in need of Another to give us his righteousness, to complete us, to live in us. ...

A wealthy Dutch collector was searching for a rare diamond to complete his collection. When a renowned New York dealer located the perfect stone, he invited the man to come see it in person. The Du...

Check out our video discussion of the text with Austin D. Hill & Stu Strachan. Click here to view! AIM Commentary The small size of Bethlehem reminds one of a common biblical theme: When God...

Ancient lens What's the historical context? Couldn’t See That Coming Powerful parents with a family pedigree derived from Judah and the Davidic line was the common narrative for how most peop...

Most exalted Trinity, divinity above all knowledge, whose goodness passes understanding, who guides Christians to divine wisdom; direct our way to the summit of your mystical oracles, most incomprehen...