The Way of Beauty and a Foretaste of the King’s Banquet
In reading today’s Gospel, one might be tempted to frame this king as a petty hothead who flew off the rails because someone made a bad fashion choice for a party. But let’s dissect this a bit: the king was not merely put off by the guests’ choice of clothing, but by the complete lack of regard for the dignity of the occasion, which warranted a spotless garment. Nor was this king unreasonable in his demand, for he would gladly have provided appropriate attire for each wedding guest. Yet in their pride and self-sufficiency, they refused to accept his generosity.
Our human hearts long for the ecstatic joy of the Heavenly Banquet, yet we truly cannot partake in this banquet unless less we are clothed with the “spotless garment.” However, we have no means of obtaining this spotless garment on our own merits. There is no word, deed, thought, or action we can offer that could purchase eternity for us. Yet Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, generously shed his own Precious Blood in order to purchase this garment for us. If we are too proud or self-sufficient to accept this gift, then we too are unfit for the eternal kingdom of heaven.
Our entire earthly pilgrimage is but a preparation for this great Heavenly Banquet. This is why we as Catholics must strive to ensure the centrality of the Holy Mass in our lives. All of our earthly possessions, status, and social identities will one day cease, but it is our earnest hope that we might one day praise God ceaselessly in heaven. The Mass must not only be central in our private lives, but it must be culturally expressed.
While we were not likely taught history in this fashion, it is crucial to note that Western Civilization as a whole grew out of the cultivation of the Holy Mass! John Senior, in his book entitled The Restoration of Christian Culture states the following:
[Western Civilization] is the Mass and the paraphernalia which protect and facilitate it. All architecture, art political, and social forms, economics, the way people live and feel and think, music, literature—all these things when they are right are ways of fostering and protecting the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.”
As an erstwhile student of music, I certainly know this to be the case. Practically every college textbook for music history identifies the same source as the seedbed of music in Western Civilization: Gregorian Chant!
As modern Catholics, we sometimes falsely believe the reverse of this narrative, namely, that great schools of art, architecture, physical sciences, music, philosophy, and even cuisine were reared in the secular realm, and the Church merely came along and picked up some proverbial table scraps. However, this is far from the case!
I bring this up not merely as a “trophy” of Catholic cultural heritage, or as a form of apologetics, but rather, I bring this up as a way to remind us of the importance of the Way of Beauty. We espouse the Way of Beauty because of the lofty nature of our eternal aspiration, which is the Eternal Wedding Feast of the Lamb. We espouse the Way of Beauty because the heaviness of earthly life often eclipses the faint rays of glimmering hope that radiate from heaven.
If we as Catholics were merely interested fulfilling a social duty, or if we were a society meeting weekly to satisfy in a perfunctory way the by-laws set forth by our founder, then we need not be overly concerned with beauty. If this were the case, so long as our buildings were structurally sound, functional, and up to code, they would be more than adequate. A priest would have no need to fuss with vestments, incense, or polished ritual. As for music, a simple recording or “jingle” might suffice.
However, our forebears in the Universal Church did set forth a Rite for priest to follow that does in fact include vestments, incense, and a refined ars celebrandi, that is, the art of celebrating Mass. Likewise, our forebears here in good old Nordeast sacrificed of their resources to build beautiful churches with stained glass and ornate altarpieces. And as for music, we have been bequeathed with a rich millennium of cultural riches, such that the Second Vatican Council deemed it a “treasure of inestimable value, greater even that that of any other art.
Our embrace of the Way of Beauty is not merely an aesthetic code, nor is it a highfalutin appreciation of the “fine arts.” No, it is an earthly preparation to whet our appetites for the great Heavenly Banquet to which our King calls us!
~Sam Backman, Director of Sacred Music