July 23, 2005
Our wonderful new Pope Benedict XVI, like his predecessor the Great John Paul II, knows how to combine faith and prayer with intelligence and theology to produce works that are both scholarly and inspiring. He does, to quote a phrase of his friend Hans Urs von Balthasar, “theology on his knees.”
In one of a series of sermons on the Holy Eucharist collected in a book entitled God Is Near Us (Ignatius, 2003), the Pope – then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – comments on how much church music can elucidate a particular sacred text: “Such compositions are an ‘exegesis’ of the mystery more profound than any of our rational interpretations.”
Sacred art as exegesis (the explanation or interpretation of a text) – what an amazing observation! And yet how true. Also, what an overwhelming affirmation of those works of art (music, painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, literature) that adorn the halls and the history of the Church – all proclamations of the Word of God, all echoes of the “Word made flesh:” the word made visual, audible, musical, tactile – accessible not only to our minds, but to our senses, emotions and hearts as well.
Fr. Herald J. Brock, CFR
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