Lumen Fidei: The Pursuit of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful

Continuing with Paragraph 35 of Lumen Fidei, Pope Francis talks about those who seek God through the light of faith, even though they haven’t yet found Him. He says,

Because faith is a way, it also has to do with the lives of those men and women who, though not believers, nonetheless desire to believe and continue to seek. To the extent that they are open to love and set out with whatever light they can find, they are already, even without knowing it, on the path leading to faith….. Anyone who sets off on the path of doing good to others is already drawing near to God, is already sustained by his help, for it is characteristic of the divine light to brighten our eyes whenever we walk toward the fullness of love.

This resonates with some of my recent reflections on the three Transcendentals: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Thomas Aquinas assures us that these three are convertible with Being, and Being with God: God is, in a mysterious way, Being itself, Truth itself, Goodness itself, Beauty itself. Francis alludes to this in the last sentence quoted above: in pursing goodness one pursues Goodness itself; and in pursuing Goodness itself, one is pursuing God.

The same naturally applies to the pursuit of Truth and Beauty: those who sincerely pursue them are, whether they know it or not, pursuing God—and run a real risk of finding Him.

And there’s a corollary, it seems to me. If I meet someone who is genuinely after the truth, but who finds Christianity nonsensical, or someone who is genuinely pursuing good works, but who thinks that Christianity is evil, I might encourage them to dig deeper; I might endeavour to show them that Christianity is eminently sensible and rational, that Christianity is ordered toward goodness despite the sins of individual Christians. I might encourage them, in short, to taste and see. But to ignore their concerns, to encourage them to embrace Christ in spite of their concerns, to refuse to engage with their concerns, strikes me as encouraging them to move away from God, not toward Him. And indeed, they should be saluted for sticking to their guns, and their love of Truth or Goodness or Beauty.

Which of the three draws you closer to God?