The Beauty that Pierces the Heart: Joseph Ratzinger’s Christological Understanding of Beauty

Abstract

The Pope is your friend.... We need you. We need your collaboration in order to carry out our ministry, which consists, as you know, in preaching and rendering accessible and comprehensible to the minds and hearts of our people the things of the spirit, the invisible, the ineffable, the things of God Himself. And in this activity of transposing the invisible world into accessible and intelligible forms you are masters. It is your task, your mission; and your art consists in grasping treasures from the heavenly realm of the spirit and clothing them in words, colors, forms—making them accessible.2