Selections from Section 16
On the threshold of the Third Millennium,
my hope for all of you who are artists
is that you will have an especially intense experience
of creative inspiration.
May the beauty which you pass on
to generations still to come be such
that it will stir them to wonder!
Faced with the sacredness of life
and of the human person,
and before the marvels of the universe,
wonder is the only appropriate attitude.
From this wonder there can come
that enthusiasm of which Norwid spoke
in the poem to which I referred earlier.
People of today and tomorrow
need this enthusiasm if they are to meet
and master the crucial challenges
which stand before us.
Thanks to this enthusiasm, humanity,
every time it loses its way,
will be able to lift itself up and set out again
on the right path.
In this sense it has been said with profound insight
that “beauty will save the world”….
Beauty is a key to the mystery
and a call to transcendence.
It is an invitation to savour life
and to dream of the future.
That is why the beauty of created things
can never fully satisfy.
It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God
which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine
could express in incomparable terms:
“Late have I loved you,
beauty so old and so new:
late have I loved you!”….
Artists of the world,
may your many different paths all lead
to that infinite Ocean of beauty
where wonder becomes
awe, exhilaration, unspeakable joy.
May you be guided and inspired
by the mystery of the Risen Christ,
whom the Church in these days
contemplates with joy.
May the Blessed Virgin Mary be with you always:
she is the “tota pulchra” portrayed
by countless artists, whom Dante contemplates
among the splendours of Paradise
as “beauty that was joy in the eyes
of all the other saints”….