“Life Is Beautiful” Mass
Basilica of the Assumption
October 19, 2025
Looking for Beauty
“Beauty,” they say, “is in the eye of the beholder. Or as William Shakespeare’s sonnet, Love’s Labour’s Lost, would have it, “Beauty is bought by the judgment of the eye.” What appeals to one person may not appeal to another. My father thought watching football on Sunday was beautiful. My mom thought buying new furniture was beautiful. I think old fountain pens are beautiful. Few agree with me. For many people, beauty is simply a matter of taste and preference, a matter of appearance, something entirely subjective.
But faith and reason, pulling together, teach us that there is a beauty deeper than appearances, a beauty that is deeply embedded in every human being. This beauty is beheld by the Divine Eye – it is beheld in the sight of God, the God who is Creator and Redeemer of each person without exception. Such beauty cannot be dismissed as arguable or a mere matter of taste. Put another way, such beauty is luminously objective, not merely subjective.
Not Always Self-Evident
Yet, this deeper beauty is not always easy for us to see. Years ago, a Catholic couple came to see me. They came to Mass every Sunday. They were involved in their parish. Yet, when their unborn baby girl received a heartbreaking diagnosis – and their doctor strongly urged an abortion – they were convinced that their baby’s life would not be worth living. Try as I might, I could not convince them that the life of their unborn child had human dignity, worth, and beauty. All they could see the hardships they and their unborn daughter would face.
The same could be said of some adult children coping with aging parents who are frail, chronically ill, or suffering from dementia. They are tempted to think that their parents’ lives no longer have beauty and meaning – and that hastening death is the compassionate thing to do. They see little value, let alone beauty, in their parents’ last days, yet it is often in the last moments of life that God’s grace shines most brightly.
Walking in the neighborhood surrounding this Basilica, we see many people who are homeless, drug addicted, and mentally ill. They are unkept. They can be loud, sometimes aggressive. They can frighten us. We are tempted to wish they were not in our path. It can be hard for us to say of them, “life is beautiful”, that is, “their life is beautiful” – all we see is the deprivation of the streets. To put it another way, it’s easier to affirm that “life is beautiful” in the abstract than it is to affirm the beauty of an actual life in its destitution.
Persistence
It turns out that the phrase, “life is beautiful” is not self-evident. Indeed, we have to struggle within ourselves to affirm the beauty of lives that may strike us as burdensome or off-putting. And while wrestling with ourselves, we are called upon to affirm the beauty of life in a society that sees no beauty in an unwanted pregnancy, sees no worth in an old man who has lost his faculties, or finds nothing of beauty in a homeless woman on the street. Yet, if we would rightly claim to be pro-life, not only do we have to challenge such views in society, but we also have to overcome in ourselves every tendency to see this or that life as not beautiful.
How will we overcome resistance in ourselves and in our culture? What tools are at our disposal to win this struggle which is neither academic nor ideological – but rather a struggle with real-life consequences? May I suggest that today’s Scripture readings guide us in finding what we need to overcome resistance in ourselves and in our society to the divinely mandated proposition that “life is beautiful.”
In the reading from Exodus, Moses was in a protracted struggle with Amalek, a fierce military opponent who threatened the existence of the Chosen People. We are neither in a military battle nor are we mere partisans in ideological struggles. But we are called upon to defend the beauty and goodness of all life in legislatures, courts, and in the wider culture. We also realize that our struggle is “not merely against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers” (Eph 6:12), the never ending assault on human life orchestrated by the evil one. Unlike Moses, we may not have an Aaron or a Hur to keep our arms raised as the struggle ensues, but as members of the Body of Christ, we have one another, and we need one another, as together we affirm without stint or hesitation that every life created and redeemed by the Word made Flesh is beautiful.
And just as St. Paul urges Timothy to remain faithful, in all circumstances, to the divine teaching that he received, so too let us nurture our own spiritual lives by prayerfully reading the Scriptures and by our attentiveness to the wisdom of the Church on the sanctity and beauty of every human life. Persistence in forming ourselves to think as Christ does – that is key toward penetrating beyond appearances to reality.
Finally, as the Gospel enjoins, don’t we have to pray? Knock. Ask. Beg. Beseech – Jesus insists. Reading this Gospel, we may think of the things we are demanding of God: the job we want, the money we need, the spouse we’re looking for, and so on. But what Jesus is really urging us to ask for is the wisdom to see ourselves and our humanity – and the humanity of others – as God sees us, warts and all, and to know that God loves and values us, even when we have trouble valuing ourselves and others. Once I spoke to Pope Benedict about the need for vocations in Baltimore and he said to me, “If you want priestly vocations, pray for them.” Of course, I knew that, but when the Pope says it to you, it hits home. I prayed and you have prayed, and now we have 63 seminarians. Well, the same is true for the defense of life from conception until natural death. If we want to see the beauty of each life, and more than that, to convince the culture around us to see it, we have to pray and pray hard. And sometimes we are the mountain that only prayer can move.
Prophets of Hope
Finally, in this Jubilee Year of Hope, let’s remember that we are called to be prophets of hope, prophets, because we see the God-given beauty of human life, prophets, because we are willing to advocate for the dignity of each human life, prophets, because we defend and protect the lives of the vulnerable – prophets of hope, like Ellen Salter and Judy Crowninshield, whom we will honor today at the conclusion of Mass with the Life Is Beautiful Award and the Culture of Life Medal. Let us be, like them, those prophets, those advocates whose arms never weary, whose eyes never glaze over when reading the Word of God, and whose hearts are continually raised in prayer. Only then can you and I truly affirm, with our all hearts, “Life Is Beautiful”! And may God bless us and keep us always in his love!