33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C, Nov 16, 2025)
“How the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and votive offerings…” (Luke 21:5)
“Beauty addresses itself chiefly to sight … Is there some One Principle from which all take their grace…? Undoubtedly this Principle exists; it is something that is perceived at the first glance, something which the soul names as from an ancient knowledge and, recognizing, welcomes it, enters into unison with it….
Our interpretation is that the soul – by the very truth of its nature, by its affiliation to the noblest Existents in the hierarchy of Being – when it sees anything of that kin, or any trace of that kinship, thrills with an immediate delight, takes its own to itself, and thus stirs anew to the sense of its nature and of all its affinity….
And this inner vision, what is its operation?
Newly awakened it is all too feeble to bear the ultimate splendor. Therefore, the Soul must be trained – to the habit of remarking, first, all noble pursuits, then the works of beauty produced not by the labor of the arts but by the virtue of men known for their goodness: lastly, you must search the souls of those that have shaped these beautiful forms.
But how are you to see into a virtuous soul and know its loveliness?
Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiseling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendor of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine.
When you know that you have become this perfect work, when you are self-gathered in the purity of your being, nothing now remaining that can shatter that inner unity, nothing from without clinging to the authentic man, when you find yourself wholly true to your essential nature, wholly that only veritable Light which is not measured by space, not narrowed to any circumscribed form nor again diffused as a thing void of term, but ever unmeasurable as something greater than all measure and more than all quantity- when you perceive that you have grown to this, you are now become very vision: now call up all your confidence, strike forward yet a step – you need a guide no longer – strain, and see. This is the only eye that sees the mighty Beauty….
Therefore, first let each become godlike and each beautiful who cares to see God and Beauty … and The Good, which lies beyond, is the Fountain at once and Principle of Beauty: the Primal Good and the Primal Beauty have the one dwelling-place and, thus, always, Beauty’s seat is There.”
– Excerpt from Plotinus, Enneads I,6 (The Enneads of Plotinus: THE FIRST ENNEAD: SIXTH TRACTATE… | Sacred Texts Archive) –