“Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! … You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”
Over sixteen centuries ago and with such vivid language, St. Augustine of Hippo wrote one of history’s finest love poems. It certainly beats “Roses are red, violets are blue.”
I have thought often about St. Augustine in relation to the National Eucharistic Revival underway in the Catholic Church in the United States today. Some have described the revival as a process of “falling in love with the Eucharist” — either again or for the very first time.
Most of us understand what falling in love is like. No one falls in love because they read a bullet-point list of their beloved’s qualifications, a résumé of his skills or an article about her accomplishments. On the contrary, love always follows an encounter. It excites the senses. It gives us butterflies.
Falling in love with Jesus is not that different. Eucharistic catechesis and explanation is wonderful, but without an encounter, it will not spark the kind of burning desire that inspired St. Augustine’s words.
How can the Church help us to fall in love with Jesus? The great task of the Eucharistic Revival is to answer that question.
The Eucharist doesn’t just appear. The Body and Blood of Jesus are made real before our very eyes, live and in color, at Mass. This celebration of the Eucharist, particularly on Sundays in the presence of all the faithful, must be done with a beauty that inspires outrageous love.
Beauty, as the saying goes, it is in the eye of the beholder. But is it really that subjective? As St. Augustine so eloquently describes it, beauty is that which shouts to us, flashes before us, breathes on us and touches us. It fills us with desire and wonder. It delights the eyes and the ears and the lips. Aesthetics matter. Beauty does not have to be particularly ornate or expensive, but it does have to be profound. It has to move us beyond the ordinary into the realm of the extraordinary.
It seems no coincidence to me that we begin Lent on Valentine’s Day this year. Lent calls us back to one simple reality: Jesus, our Beloved, is the whole reason for our existence. To make Him the object of our desire, as Augustine did, is our only resolution. To love and be loved by Him is all that matters. Every encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist — rich in beauty, ever ancient, ever new — communicates that reality to us.
