Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least

When Hans Urs von Balthasar, the great theologian and philosopher of the twentieth century, wrote, “Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance,” he was speaking to an age that had forgotten the sacred unity of the transcendentals — Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. His words are both a lament and a prophecy: a lament for a civilization that had exiled beauty to the realm of luxury and illusion, and a prophecy that beauty, when rejected, would not die quietly, but would rise again — fierce and vengeful — to reclaim her rightful place beside her sisters. For in the soul of humanity, the three are one; to wound one is to wound them all.

In the classical and medieval worlds, beauty, truth, and goodness were seen as divine reflections of one eternal reality. The ancients taught that these three were not separate paths but one luminous way to the sacred — the way of harmony, virtue, and wisdom. Plato saw beauty as the radiance of truth made visible; Saint Augustine wrote that to love the good is to love what is beautiful in God. But as the modern age advanced, men sought to divide what had once been whole. The pursuit of truth became cold and mechanical, stripped of awe. Goodness was reduced to moral regulation without love. And beauty — the most mysterious of the three — was cast aside as decorative, subjective, even dangerous. It was as though humanity, in its pride, had tried to tear out the heart of reality and live by reason alone.

Balthasar, who lived through the world wars and the spiritual desolation of the twentieth century, saw the cost of this separation. When beauty is exiled, he warns, the human spirit becomes barren. Truth without beauty becomes tyranny — harsh, lifeless, and cruel. Goodness without beauty becomes moralism — rigid and joyless, stripped of compassion. But when beauty departs, she does not go quietly. She carries with her the warmth and meaning that sustain truth and goodness, and in her absence, both wither. Her vengeance is mysterious not because it is violent, but because it manifests as despair, ugliness, and spiritual emptiness in the world that denied her.

To see this truth, one need only look to history. In the age of totalitarian regimes — the rise of Nazi Germany and Soviet communism — beauty was either enslaved to propaganda or destroyed outright. Art was twisted to serve ideology, truth was censored, and goodness was defined by obedience to the state. The result was a world drenched in terror, where the soul of man was suffocated. Yet even in those dark times, beauty rose in quiet defiance: the secret paintings of artists who refused to bow, the whispered poetry of prisoners, the music that echoed through concentration camps. These were not mere gestures of resistance — they were acts of salvation. For wherever beauty is born, she calls her sisters truth and goodness to return, and together they heal what tyranny has broken.

Balthasar’s warning is as relevant now as it was then. Our age, too, is tempted to treat beauty as decoration, truth as opinion, and goodness as convenience. We prize efficiency over elegance, information over wisdom, and utility over wonder. But to live without beauty is to live without breath. For beauty, as Balthasar teaches, requires courage — the courage to stand in awe, to risk vulnerability before what moves the heart, to defend what is sacred even when the world mocks it as naïve. To gaze upon beauty — true beauty, not mere prettiness — is to feel called to something higher, to be summoned toward wholeness. And that summons is not safe; it asks for decision, for the willingness to choose what uplifts the soul over what merely pleases the senses.

Consider the courage of Andrei Tarkovsky, the Russian filmmaker who, under a regime that sought to suppress spiritual art, created films like Andrei Rublev and Stalker — works filled with silence, pain, and transcendent beauty. He suffered censorship, exile, and poverty, yet never abandoned his vision. He once said, “The artist exists because the world is not perfect.” In his art, beauty became a vessel of truth and goodness once more — a light in the ruins. His story reveals the power of Balthasar’s insight: that to defend beauty is not to retreat from reality, but to redeem it.

So, my listener, let this be the teaching you carry: Do not separate what the Creator has made one. Seek beauty not as ornament, but as revelation — the visible face of truth and goodness. When you read, look not only for knowledge but for the light that stirs wonder. When you act, do not pursue duty alone, but the grace that makes goodness radiant. And when you love, let your love be beautiful — not perfect, but true. For beauty does not flee from truth; she fulfills it. She does not hide from goodness; she crowns it.

For in the end, as Hans Urs von Balthasar reminds us, beauty will not be silenced. If she is banished, she will return — fierce and sorrowful — to remind us of what we have lost. But if we welcome her, she will lead us home, back to the harmony of the divine triad where truth enlightens, goodness sanctifies, and beauty — that most tender and dangerous of sisters — opens the human heart to the eternal.