Efficiency isn’t Everything 

Beauty, Inspiration

Efficiency isn’t Everything

We were not created for output, but for God, and beauty reminds us of this truth. Ironically, it is within the unproductive nature of beauty that a person finds deep soul-productive value. While efficiency tries to rob the world of beauty because of beauty’s lack of obvious secular value related to output and productivity, true beauty in the form of Sacred Art reveals our Creator, our identity, and the truth of our Eternal Destination.

If you ever visit St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Italy, you would quickly realize that it exemplifies all of these realities.

As soon as you step foot in St. Peter’s Basilica, your focus immediately goes to the enormity of the Basilica: the high ceilings, the detailed tall arches, the larger than life statues of heavenly creatures, and many, many different altars around the main church.

What does this enormity elicit? A feeling of smallness in oneself, and an acknowledgement of something outside of oneself.  Even if St. Peter’s was a much smaller building, this feeling of something outside ourselves would still exist through the beauty of the Basilica pushing the viewer to contemplate mystery.

Beauty Reveals Something

The Pieta, for example, asks the viewer to contemplate the Mother of God holding the dead body of our Savior, true God and true man. How does she do this? Why did God allow a woman to hold the God-man? To LOVE the God-man? We do not hold all the answers. We are not gods. Something (SomeONE) knows the answers to these mysteries, and beauty in Sacred Art helps us know that we are not the one who knows.

Beauty points us to the Creator of creators. I remember walking through the beautiful arches of St. Peter’s early one morning, and each individual chapel held a priest saying his own individual Mass. It felt like a beautiful hushed secret within the halls of Sacred Art that someone welcomed me into. It pointed me, again, outside myself and to mystery.

Efficiency and Truth

Now, efficiency is not mysterious. Efficiency is measurable and controllable. How much more comfortable and intelligible to say “I know what life is and how to measure myself by these standards” than to say “I know who my Creator is and now I must measure myself by His standards, even to the point of accepting mystery.” The Creator’s standards often involve resting in beauty. God wants to prepare our hearts in this life in order to receive His Being more fully in the next.  

“For ‘In him we live and move and have our being,’ as even some of your poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ Since therefore we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divinity is like an image fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination.” (Acts of the Apostles 17:28-29) 

The Lily by Kate Capato

When we look at a Sacred Image, it does not come close to the reality of God, but it pushes us to ask the question: Who is this God, our Creator? While efficiency shies away from contemplating these questions because there is no worldly, practical outcome, beauty pushes us closer to the Truth.

Where does Sacred Art Lead us?

Sacred Art and contemplation of such beauty also reveals our deepest identity. When we make beauty a constant in our lives, we find a sense of peace in our present moment, a sense of peace in our littleness, and a desire to seek out beauty more often. We are beings made to rest in Him. Beauty reflects Him, so we must rest in beauty too. This peace stands in juxtaposition to the identity story told by efficiency: “your worth and essence is output and productivity.”

Peace appears from knowing that our identity is not in our output of life. Productivity is incomparable to the interior freedom of knowing our identity is that of beings created for eternity. Again, the mystery of beauty is key in all of this.

If identity is simply tied to output, then it leads to depression if output cannot be achieved in any given moment:  “I cannot be little or rest, or I will lose who I am and what I am worth” The mystery of beauty, however, will always be present, and will always remind us of our identity as beings who were meant to receive the relationship with their Creator in the rest and the silence. 

Beauty points us also to our Eternal Destination.

The smallness we feel in light of mystery leads us to remember our Creator. The mystery itself  leads us to remember our identity as beings in need of a Creator who knows the answers. And the fulfillment we receive from resting with beauty leads us to remember our Eternal Destination: to rest with God for all eternity, not to be productive for all eternity. 

If efficiency was all there was, then our end goal would be to produce for all eternity. This is a utilitarian idea of an after life at best, and miserable at worst. As mentioned at the beginning, we need the reminder that we were not created for output, but for the Creator. How do we find this reminder? Resting in beauty and with beauty. Sometimes this rest comes quietly.

At the back of St. Peter’s Basilica is an image of the Holy Spirit. But one wouldn’t notice it at first glance. We must start at the beginning. We must silence ourselves, rest in the beauty, and then we will see the reality of our Creator’s love and our identity as creatures created for Eternal peace. With this newfound understanding of Creator, self, and our Eternal destiny, we can move forward with joy and confidence in this life until the next. 

What are you called to? 

I invite you today to experience resting in beauty by going to sit in your local cathedral and just be still. Look around at the Sacred Art, and invite the Lord in. Let Him use beauty to transform your heart. Let resting in beauty transform you for His glory. 

Bring Beauty to Your Heart and Community

Paula Belocura has her BA in Psychology from Ave Maria University and her MLitt in Shakespeare and Performance from Mary Baldwin University. She works full time at a consulting company seeking to promote civil society, and after work, you’ll find her directing Shakespeare plays or taking long walks on the beach with her husband. She is grateful that God created beauty.

Kate Capato

Kate is a Sacred Art Painter, Inspirational Speaker, and Faith-filled Movement artist on a mission to spread God's love through beauty! Her inspiration comes from prayerful encounters with the Lord, and the rich traditions of our Catholic faith. When she's not creating something faith inspired, Kate is often traveling all over the world with her hubby soaking in the wonders of God's creation, or spending time with family and friends to live every moment to the fullest. To see her work, visit her portfolio below and share in this mission of spreading truth and goodness.

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