When exhorting the throngs at World Youth Day, Pope Benedict XVI at one point urged the young people to seek truth, goodness and beauty in their lives and in the world.
In the 14th century, in the book "The Life in Christ" by the Byzantine theologian, Nicholas Cabasilas, we rediscover Plato's experience in which the ultimate object of man's longing/poignancy transformed by the new Christian experience, is nameless. Cabasilas says: "When men have a longing so great that it surpasses human nature and eagerly desire and are able to accomplish things beyond human thought, it is the Bridegroom who has smitten them with this longing. It is he who has sent a ray of his beauty into their eyes. The greatness of the wound already shows the arrow which has struck home, the longing indicates who has inflicted the wound" (cf. "The Life in Christ," the Second Book, 15). True knowledge is being struck by the arrow of Beauty that wounds man, moved to apprehend "how it is Christ himself who is present."
A love for Nature, a love for her beauties, a love for art and music and surpassingly lovely architecture, a passion for goodness and truth: what are these but a love of souls? What are these but the yearning of the soul for its Creator and the intuition of the signature of the Author in His "books"? The miracle of an apple blossom, a rose, a water lily ~ its scent, its perfection, the delicate fuzzy tiny heart of the flower, like a soft golden crown ~ such stand as a marker of the right way on the highway to heaven. Veined with light, fragrant and serene, they carpet the pathways of The King.
It is very good that the curent pontiff is encouraging the young people in this.
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