“All great works of art are an epiphany of God” …

… Had it not been for art I would not be a Catholic. It was in the halls of the Chrysler Museum that God’s existence was reinforced in my heart at a very young age. These private revelations and faith filled manifestations were not fostered in the typically aesthetic austere environment of modern churches. There was no sermon in my youth that could have possibly verbalized the Mysteries of Christ more articulately than great works of art.

Rubens, Descent From the Cross

Our Holy Father speaks on the topic of art being an epiphany of God;

“A form of reason that in any way wanted to strip itself of beauty would be depleted, it would be blind.”

“… if we contemplate the created beauties of the faith, these simply are, I would say, the living proof of faith. Take this beautiful cathedral: it is a living proclamation! It speaks to us on its own, and beginning with the beauty of the cathedral we are able to proclaim in a visible way God, Christ and all of his mysteries: here these have taken shape, and are gazing back at us. All of the great works of art…are a luminous sign of God, and therefore truly a manifestation, an epiphany of God.“

“Christian art is a rational form of art – we think of Gothic art, great music, or the Baroque art right here – but this is the artistic expression of a much broader form of reason, in which the heart and reason come together. This is the point. This, I think, is in some way the proof of the truth of Christianity: the heart and reason come together, beauty and truth touch. And to the extent that we are able to live in the beauty of truth, so much more will faith again be able to be creative, in our own time as well, and to express itself in a convincing artistic form.”