Selections from Section 4
The link between good and beautiful
stirs fruitful reflection.
In a certain sense,
beauty is the visible form of the good,
just as the good is the metaphysical condition
of beauty….
It is in living and acting that man establishes
his relationship with being,
with the truth and with the good.
The artist has a special relationship to beauty.
In a very true sense it can be said
that beauty is the vocation bestowed on him
by the Creator in the gift of “artistic talent”.
And, certainly, this too is a talent
which ought to be made to bear fruit,
in keeping with the sense of the Gospel parable
of the talents (cf. Mt 25:14-30).
Here we touch on an essential point.
Those who perceive in themselves
this kind of divine spark
which is the artistic vocation --
as poet, writer, sculptor, architect,
musician, actor and so on --
feel at the same time the obligation
not to waste this talent but to develop it,
in order to put it at the service of their neighbour
and of humanity as a whole.