Hope: A Beautiful Reality
When we encounter beauty, there is always a moment of pause to relish the attraction that beholds. There is an intense force that awakens the soul to truths that transcends human experience. Looking more deeply in beauty, there are also correlated significance between beauty and hope. Thus, this essay explores how beauty can be a reflection of hope and to observe how beauty can restore hope in the world especially to the Church in view of St. John Paul II and St. Thomas Aquinas. For them, beauty is not merely ornamental but essential in stirring the soul to contemplate and rekindle hope in a fragmented world. In his Letter to Artists , John Paul II’s notion of beauty is fundamentally rooted in the interconnectedness of truth, goodness, and beauty, as a triad of transcendentals that allows man to glimpse things beyond them. He connects this idea by reflecting on the classical Greek concept of kalokagathia, which combines beauty (kalos) and goodness (agathos) into a complementary conce...
