A Pope and a Girl Group Walk into a Retreat Center: A Christmas Essay
The way of beauty leads
us, then, to grasp the Whole in the fragment, the Infinite in the finite, God
in the history of humanity.
- Pope Benedict XVI, Meeting With
Artists, 21 November 2009
(Religion) is either the reasonable
quest for the satisfaction of all the original desires of the heart or it is a
dangerous, divisive, harmful waste of time.
- Msgr. Lorenzo Albecete, God at
the Ritz: Attraction to Infinity, p. 154
God impressed his own form on the flesh... in such a way that even what is visible might bear the divine form.
- St. Irenaeus of Lyons, The Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching
Ayaw kumalas ang aking pagtingin sa'yo (Oo)
Ayaw nang mahiwalay
Kahit na panghabang-buhay na mag-iintay
- BINI, I Feel Good
“I Get
It Now”
G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “you look at a thing nine
hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the
thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.”[1] Unlike
most people my age, I am very, very ignorant (and very, very dismissive) of the
current trends in pop culture today. I even wrote a blog series on my concerns and criticisms about modern pop music. (As to whether I still agree with such criticisms is a topic for another time.) Simply put, I’m not a fan of what’s popular. Sure, I
listen to a few new songs and witness the birth of new fashion trends here and
there, but I never really got to be a “follower” or a “big fan” of whatever it
is that may be labelled “new.” I’m what people would consider as someone having
an “old soul.” This is most true in my music taste. For instance, I’m basically
in the dark when it comes to Taylor Swift’s discography, but talk to me about
the songs of Miles Davis and Prince? You’ll have my attention for hours, my
friend!
One of the things I find very annoying about pop music
and pop stars is that they’re everywhere. It doesn’t matter where you
are or what you’re doing: whether you’re walking at a local mall, scrolling
through hundreds of Facebook reels, dancing at a birthday party, etc., you hear
it all the time. To go back to the Chesterton quote, pop artists and their art
is something that we all “look at nine hundred and ninety-nine times.” And I do
not have patience for overly repetitive things. So, the more these songs play
over and over again, the more I see these artists’ faces again and again, the
more I turn away. “I heard that for the 856th time this week. Don’t we have
something different?” I would say to myself. This might even be the reason why
I’d rather listen to the old stuff: because they’re no longer repeated all the
time so, paradoxically, these older songs feel more fresh to my ears.
But “if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.”
You see, the blessing – which sometimes feels like a
burden – of being Catholic is that you are obligated to see things as
fundamentally good. Why? Because God Himself “saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Gen 1:31).
The all-Good God cannot be the cause of evil; hence, all that comes from Him –
his creatures – are good in themselves (evil, therefore, is not another
“entity” alongside the good, but rather is just a lack – a privation – of
the good). Even sin is defined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church as
something “caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods” (emphasis
mine).[2]
Notice that sin is due, not to the goods themselves, but our mistaken obsession
over these same goods. For instance, when someone is guilty with the sin of
gluttony, it’s not because the large chocolate cake he ate after dinner is
inherently bad – again, nothing is inherently bad (see the quote from Genesis
again) – but because he deliberately chose to ignore the goods that are more
noble than the chocolate cake, i.e. health, the obligation to share the food to
others, etc.
This is not the
place to discuss such things further. I gave a brief explanation of how the
Church sees all of creation so that you may understand what comes next. Not too
long ago from my writing this post, I was taking my regular evening walk around
certain areas of the city when I had what could be considered either an
epiphany or, if you may, a theophany (a revelation from God). No, I did not
have extraordinary visions; I did not levite; I certainly did not see an
apparition of Christ or His saints. But what I had was an insight; an
insight that made me say “I get it now.” In other words, I was in the position
of “seeing it
for the first time.”
I now understand
why people develop a certain attachment – which may or may not be
inordinate/perverse – to pop stars and their music: it’s because they, in their
own limited way, get a share in the basic goodness that all creatures have from
God that we have seen above. And this goodness, I believe, has the potential to
be the “good soil” upon which the seed of the Gospel can be planted and bear
fruit in great numbers (Mt 13:8).
Pope Benedict XVI once said that, “We must summon
fresh energy for tackling the problems of how to announce the gospel anew in
such a way that this world can receive it, and we must muster all of our
energies to do this.”[3] In a world
growing increasingly secular, it sometimes feels like communicating the truths
of the Gospel will inevitably be ineffective. But there’s still hope! I am
committed to the belief that humans are inherently religious beings, and that
when they become fascinated by creatures and their goodness and beauty,
it’s because they have seen in these creatures a foretaste of the all-Good and all-Beautiful
God. Cardinal Rainero Cantalamessa wrote that “the beauty we experience in
the world is fragmented.”[4] When we
are captivated by a work of art, pierced by the outstanding beauty of a sunset,
when we fall in love with another person, and when we are amazed at the
precision and coherence of a pop group’s bodily movements, we are seeing fragments
of Divine Beauty. And because we only encounter fragments, our hearts
desire more; the gaping hole in our very souls desire the whole banquet,
the banquet that only God can give.
This is why I haven’t lost hope. This is why I believe
that Pope Benedict’s exhortation to “announce the gospel anew” is still
possible (with God’s grace, of course): because people still see goodness and
beauty in many things, especially in the things of popular culture, and people
still feel captivated by them. It is in goodness and beauty that we feel a
gravitational pull to these good and beautiful creatures and, ultimately, to
the very Source of these good and beautiful creatures. Small “g” goodness and
small “b” beauty – and in this blog post, we will focus on beauty – points to
capital “G” Goodness and capital “B” Beauty. It is in the beauty of creation –
of nature, of an artwork, of a musical piece – that we realize, as St.
Augustine wrote, that “our hearts are restless,” but it is in the message of
the Gospel that we will help our fellow men – our fellow “creatures of desire – discover that “our hearts can only rest in Him,” that is, in the very blissful and
always beautiful presence of the Maker of all things.
The task of the evangelist is therefore to allow
Gospel and culture to meet. The obligation of all the baptized is to recognize
the cry of popular culture to encounter beauty and to present to them the
Person in Whom we will encounter Beauty in the Flesh: Jesus Christ. And
the “empty canvas” upon which this encounter can take place is, among other
things, in pop music.
This blog post is a “case study” of some sorts. We
will see if my evaluation of popular culture and human desire is plausible at
the very least. We will look at a good example of a representative of pop
culture – the P-pop girl group BINI – and what they can teach us. We
will then put their “message,” so to speak, in conversation with a
representative of the Gospel, Pope St. John Paul II, and see how the sainted
pontiff might approach their music, dance, and visuals. I believe that, had the
members of BINI been able to meet JP2, the latter will point out how the
former’s artistry points to the truth of Christianity; particularly, how it
points to the message of Christmas.
BINI,
Beauty, and the Human Body
There’s something special about K-Pop music and its
musical “cousin,” P-pop, particularly how they see the indispensable role of
the beauty of the human body as part of their overall presentation. Sure,
from the very beginnings of modern pop, there always has been an emphasis on
visuals, especially when music videos started to become the popular means in
promoting one’s music. But K- and P-pop have taken things to a different level.
Certain brands would partner up with pop groups in order to incentivize fans to
buy their product because if you do, you’ll get a free “photocard” of your
favorite group member (sort of like a secular version of the stampita).
Many would even start their own fashion trends so that people can have the
chance to wear what they wear.[5] Of course,
who would forget the over-the-top music videos that aim to emphasize the
out-of-this-world aesthetics of the performers? Lastly, think about the fact
that, besides having a “main rapper” or “main dancer/singer,” K- and P-Pop now
have what is called a “main visual” of a group, the one considered the most physically
attractive above the other members. And many people love this way of marketing
modern pop stars and/or groups! If they didn’t, then they wouldn’t consume
their products, these groups wouldn’t have broken major records, and the genre
wouldn’t have been the global phenomenon it is today
 |
| BINI |
This brings us to BINI, an 8-member girl group
from the Philippines, dubbed by many as “The Nation’s Girl Group.” BINI has
broken so many records. Based on my research, the group now has more than a
billion Spotify streams and has over 700 million views on YouTube. They are also
the first Filipino act to top the Daily Top Artists Chart on Spotify,
surpassing Taylor Swift, and were recognized as Women of the Year by Billboard
Philippines this year (2025).[6]
I would be lying if I said I haven’t listened to some
of their songs. The strength of pop music is in the production: it’s always
clean and (almost) perfect. No wonder people obsess over their songs. I
particularly love funky tunes, and so “Salamin, Salamin” is automatically a
song that I liked in terms of musicality. Other than that and a few songs,
though, I’m no longer “hip” enough to provide insights and critiques on their
other offerings.
But I’ve seen how they market themselves on the
internet, and for the most part, they follow the general rule in modern pop to
emphasize physical aesthetics as a way to entice consumers and listeners.
Photocards? They got that covered.[7] TikTok
accounts? They have that too. Outstanding bodily movements through dance? As
expected, they do not disappoint. Fantastic music videos? Don’t be silly; of
course they do those things too! Simply put, BINI is successful, BINI holds a
great influence over popular culture, because they seem to touch upon a basic
desire in the human heart. And what is this basic desire? It’s the yearning of
each man and woman to see Ultimate Beauty “enfleshed;” to unite the
human body to the best type of aesthetics possible. BINI knows that – their
fans know that! – and they use that as a medium to communicate their message
and awaken humanity’s ache to encounter great, ineffable beauty.
To once again quote Pope Benedict XVI, “an essential function of genuine
beauty… is that it gives man a healthy ‘shock’, it draws him out of himself,
wrenches him away from resignation and from being content with the humdrum – it
even makes him suffer, piercing him like a dart, but in so doing it ‘reawakens’
him, opening afresh the eyes of his heart and mind, giving him wings, carrying
him aloft.”[8]
When a painting seizes our attention, when a song pierces the very depths of
our souls, when the horizon breaks our hearts open… that’s us detecting genuine
beauty in creation. BINI’s existence seems to tell us, “this beauty that you
seek… we have it in our very physicality! We have it in our faces, in our
voices, in our movements, in our very bodies!”
 |
| "The Creation of Adam" by Michelangelo |
From the very
beginning of civilization, we have been looking for Beauty Incarnated (from
the Latin carne, “flesh” in English), for Beauty in the flesh!
History proves this point – from the ancient Greek sculptures attempting to
show the perfect physique, to the ability of Michelangelo to show the glory of
the naked body in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, to the amazing power of
Rodin to “physicalize” marble by carving the male and female physiology in it,
to the seductive swinging of Elvis Presley, to the hypnotic pop and lock moves
of Michael Jackson – we have this primordial instinct, this undying desire, to
marry beauty with physicality. But unlike the master painters or sculptors of
old, pop stars like BINI have, as their raw material, not an empty ceiling or
formless stone, but rather, the very human body itself! And we cannot
get enough of it!
We cannot get
enough: this is the blessing and, at the same time, the problem, with
art. It seems that the desire for beauty and the human body to be united has
set us on this great search, this great pilgrimage, to see if this basic
yearning of humanity can be fulfilled at last, and artists of all ages have
been our leaders in this great existential search. There’s no one painting, one
statue, one song, one dance move, that can encapsulate fully the very Ultimate
Beauty we yearn for. And so what do we do? We produce more paintings, more
statues, more songs, and more dance moves. But the search goes on! More
paintings, more statues… No wonder many artists are subject to frustration,
pain, and even depression: because perfect beauty seems to be unreachable. We
can add more colors to a painting, we can carve more curves to a statue, we can
remix songs, and we can make our dance moves more complex… and still, we
continue the pilgrimage. BINI will wear new clothes, develop new dance breaks,
record new songs, release new albums, and try on new make-up… but the desires
of their fans will remain insatiable! Cardinal Cantalamessa was right: “the beauty we experience in
the world is fragmented.” The problem is, we are yearning for more, for
something greater, better, and more perfect than the fragments. We want the
whole package! We want a Beauty that can finally allow us to rest, to
search no more. We want an aesthetic experience that will never end, that will
finally satisfy the longing within. BINI can only pick up the fragments, and
for that, we can be thankful. But BINI can only awaken in us what it cannot
satisfy: the need to perceive, to touch, to “bathe into,” the Ultimate,
Incarnate Beauty.
 |
| BINI, like the artists that came before them, reminds us of the primordial aspiration we all have within us: We desire to unite Beauty with the human body |
Hence, we arrive at the fundamental problem of being
human: Is the search for capital “B” Beauty a fruitless search? Is it a
pointless, directionless pursuit after all? Should we settle for less, for the
mere fragments? BINI, like many, many artists before them, has reminded us of
this pilgrimage, but, like many, many artists before them, has not yet found,
and cannot give us, the end goal of this pursuit.
Heck, is there even an end goal? Or are we destined to
pursue an imaginary thing? Are we creatures that will never reach the carrot
being dangled in front of us? Simply put: Is there more than the fragments of
beauty that we see in the human body? Or are we to remain frustrated, knowing
that there’s no banquet beyond the foretaste?
We need a message that will compliment the mission of
artists like BINI. If BINI says, “you are looking for Beauty,” we need someone
to tell us, “and that Beauty is here! Come and see!” Is there someone
out there that can give us this message? Is there someone who has found this
Beauty and is able to communicate to us the direction, the way, toward this
Beauty?
Fortunately for us, the answer is yes.
St.
John Paul II, Art, and the Incarnation
 |
| Pope John Paul II, when he was still Cardinal Karol Wojtyla |
Earlier this month (December 2025), I was able to read
the newly published English translation of a retreat originally delivered to
artists by then-Bishop Karol Wojtyła (later Pope John Paul II) during the Holy
Week of 1962, just months before the opening of the Second Vatican Council,
titled God is Beauty: A Retreat on the Gospel and Art, published by the
Theology of the Body Institute Press.[9]
I’m glad I was able to read this retreat, not just to prepare me for Christmas,
but also to be reminded of the proper role of art in the Christian life and how
it can be a gateway toward experiencing God and His beauty. Later on, as pope,
he would write:
The Church has not ceased to
nurture great appreciation for the value of art as such. Even beyond its
typically religious expressions, true art has a close affinity with the world
of faith, so that, even in situations where culture and the Church are far
apart, art remains a kind of bridge to religious experience. In so far as
it seeks the beautiful, fruit of an imagination which rises above the everyday,
art is by its nature a kind of appeal to the mystery. Even when they explore
the darkest depths of the soul or the most unsettling aspects of evil, artists
give voice in a way to the universal desire for redemption.[10]
(emphasis added)
“Even beyond its typically religious expressions… art remains a kind of bridge to religious experience.” Isn’t it true? Don’t we all have that Augustinian restlessness within us awakened by really good art? In this sense, good art, to reiterate what I’ve said above, puts us on a pilgrimage. But again, the question before us is this: Is this pilgrimage worth pursuing? Is there a true goal to be found, or is there none?
In God is
Beauty, St. John Paul II answers these questions in the affirmative. The
pope says that the perennial problem of looking for Ultimate, Incarnate Beauty
by artists (and those of us who enjoy great works of art) is given a definitive
solution by God when He, Beauty Himself, “took on flesh and made his
dwelling upon us” (Jn 1:14). My friends, this is good news – great news!
– if this is true! If what we celebrate during Christmas is real – if it
is indeed real that God became man and took on a human body to express the
divine mysteries bodily – then the pursuit of Ultimate, Incarnate Beauty is not
in vain! In fact, if what we celebrate during Christmas is real, then we can
encounter, not only fragments of beauty, but the very Fullness of Beauty
Himself: The God-Man Christ Jesus, in Whom “the fullness of God dwells bodily”
(Col 2:9).
Bodily! Let that sink in.
 |
| "And the Word became flesh and made His dwelling upon us. We have seen His glory..." (Jn 1:14) |
In the retreat,
Pope John Paul II recounts the time when he was a young priest studying in
Rome. He once observed the sculptures of the human body in the Diocletian
Baths, and shared to the artists attending the retreat his realization about
art and the Incarnation that came about with this encounter with the said
sculptures in Rome:
I’m reminded of the day when I
wandered for many hours around the Baths of Diocletian in Rome. I
encountered the masterpieces of ancient Greek sculpture there. That was a
very laborious day. I took great pains and noticed with what immense effort
all those people, those great masters of sculpture, had sought to demonstrate
perfect, absolute beauty in the human body, and in doing so they had been
seeking the Incarnation. After this walk of many hours… I understood the
Gospel anew… I understood that what had been the subject of the search for
absolute, impeccably perfect beauty in the human body–that was the Beauty which
did indeed become incarnate in the Gospel: God who became Man; God who revealed
himself, because he appeared in the flesh. Together with his presence, he
brought with him an entire special world of Beauty. Beauty that is peculiar to
himself; Beauty which is identical with him, just as he is identical with
Beauty.[11]
(emphasis added)
We
seek Ultimate Beauty in the Flesh. Artists like
Michelangelo and BINI prove it. In other words, we seek God Who became Man.
And this God-Man has a name: Jesus Christ. This is the revolutionary claim of
Christianity! This is good news of Christmas! By His sheer generosity, God gave
us a solution to our seemingly endless search! In Christ Jesus, Ultimate
Beauty and the Human Body have become one!
 |
| The Statue of Mercury in the Diocletian Baths (Wikimedia Commons) |
Dr. Christopher
West writes:
At the very center of the human
quest for happiness is a cry for beauty–not only to experience beauty, but to
be seen and loved as beautiful. Tragically, a world that denies God–who is Beauty–will
inevitably promote an illusory vision of beauty… But even in this misguided
quest for perfect beauty in the body, Wojtyla recognizes that we are looking
for the good news of the Gospel. Whether we know it or not, we are looking for
Christ who is perfect Beauty revealed in the body.[12]
 |
| If BINI reminds us that we are looking for Incarnate Beauty, St. John Paul II offers a complementary message: "This Incarnate Beauty that you seek, it has come in Jesus Christ!" |
I am positive
that if St. John Paul II is still living today and if we ask him to give a
cultural commentary on why artists like BINI are popular in our time, he would
say something similar to what he said about the Greek sculptures he saw in
Rome, and he would invite us to use our fascination and admiration for such
artists to “understand the Gospel anew.” BINI can only initiate the
search for Beauty, but only God can fulfill this same search. At best,
art and the artist can only serve as icons, sacramental signs,
that point to the fulfillment of the longing, but they cannot fulfill this same
longing. Only Christ – the invisible God revealed visibly in the body – can
satisfy the longing to encounter Incarnate Beauty. St. Augustine wrote in his confessions
that he “plunged into the lovely things which (God) created” but he didn’t
find the rest he was looking for. And yet, he says, addressing God: “You
called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone,
and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in
breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for
more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”[13]
There’s a certain
lack of peace that we find in art. Hence, the need to generate more art. But in
the Incarnation, we find the only thing that can give never-ending peace. God
becoming man is God’s “call” and “shout” that aims to “break through our deafness.”
May we have the eyes to see and ears to hear.
 |
| An image of the Blessed Mother beholding the Infant God-Man, revealed in the flesh |
The
Lesson: Learning to Remain Pilgrims of Beauty
There’s a
challenge here to discover – or, for us who have forgotten it, to rediscover – the
mystery of Christmas. If it is only in God that our search for Ultimate Beauty
is fulfilled, then Christmas – the season where we celebrate the Incarnation –
teaches us a lesson on how we deal with created beauty, those
“fragments” of Divine Beauty which can awaken but not fulfill our deep desire
for aesthetic fulfillment. To repeat what I’ve already mentioned above: Created
beauty – whether in nature or in man-made art – can only serve as icons,
sacramental signs that point to the Ultimate, Uncreated Beauty, expressed
in the Incarnate Christ. The world gets into trouble when it confuses the icon
with the real thing, when it thinks that the sacramental sign is actually the
thing signified. In other words, we get into trouble when the icon becomes
an idol, when we aim “our desire for God at something less than God,
latching on to some finite beauty as if it were the Infinite Beauty for which
we’re made.”[14]
Let me tell you a
story. Just a day before I wrote these words, I attended a Simbang Gabi Mass
in our parish. Not too long after we found the right pew to sit on, I noticed a
really pretty girl who’s staying on my left side. Now, I’m the kind of person
whom St. John Paul II describes as someone with a “readily roused sensuality,”[15]
a person who’s easily smitten by beauty. As you can imagine, my heart was
delighted to see this lady! But on the other hand, together with delight, I
also felt worried, because I know that, for the whole duration of the Mass, I
will be engaged in a spiritual battle.
There’s a
temptation inside of me to want to grasp at the created beauty that I
saw in this young lady. I am well familiar with this temptation, because this
is the temptation that I regularly had (and unfortunately, the temptation that
I regularly fell into) as a teenager: The temptation to “absolutize” created
beauty to the point where the beauty of the creature – particularly the beauty
of the opposite sex – become “idols that replace the Creator,” as Pope Benedict
XVI once put it.[16]
This tendency,
this habit, to idolize created beauty – to turn them into “false infinities”[17]
– has hurt me and many of those around me. It generated an unnecessary burden
and an unrealizable expectation for those girls I was attracted to. It gave me
a utilitarian vision of women, thinking that their ultimate purpose in life is
to satisfy my selfish gratifications. In my perspective, women are objects to
be used, not persons to be loved and cherished. By the grace of God, I have had
a significant degree of healing from this terrible lifestyle and worldview
through the help of spiritual direction and the sacraments, but I would be
lying if I told you I am no longer haunted by the same temptations. And there I
was, at church, wrestling once again with that same demonic seduction I
experienced in the past. (Again, this isn’t because there’s something
inherently wrong with the lady – remember our discussion of the fundamental
goodness of creatures above – but because of my inordinate attachment to
the good I’ve recognized in this lady.) All I needed to do, if I wanted to give
in to this temptation, is to fix my eyes on this lady on my left for the whole
Mass, and think terrible thoughts.
But besides this
lady on my left, just right in front of me is an image of the Crucified Christ:
Naked, bleeding to death, while nailed to the Cross. When I saw this image, I
saw the solution to my temptation. Instead of fixing my eyes, fixing my
heart, towards created beauty, I must remain conscious of what we’ve
already discussed: That this lady on my left has awakened my desire for
ultimate satisfaction; that much is true, because that’s what icons should do –
to give us a glimmer, a foretaste, of capital “B” Beauty – but only God Himself
– Him alone! – can truly fill that God-shaped hole in our hearts for Ultimate
Beauty. Given this fact, instead of fixing my gaze on creation, I must allow
it to take me on a pilgrimage to the very Creator that gave it a fragment of
beauty; I must lift up my eyes – lift up my heart, as the Liturgy
invites us – from created beauty to Uncreated Beauty, manifested in the Word
made Flesh. All I needed to do at that moment was to redirect my gaze, from
my left side to the very image in front of me.
 |
| "Christ on the Cross" by Leon Bonnat (1880) |
This, my friends,
is the key to keeping our eyes fixed on Christ and not on created things: to
realize that, in this earth, we remain pilgrims, and that the secret to living
a holy and happy life now is to remain in the pilgrimage – to recognize
that creatures are just reminders of our destiny, but not the very end
of our destiny. It is when we latch onto creation, when the icons become
idols, when the pilgrim despises the pilgrimage, that we sin, that we
harm ourselves and our fellow humans.
We must expound
this further. The Christian call to resist temptation to sin can be explained
by borrowing from what St. John Paul II said in God is Beauty. While it
is true that he’s primarily addressing artists, what he said can be applicable
to all of us who are “entrusted (by God) with the task of crafting (our) own
lives: in a certain sense, (we) are to make of it a work of art, a
masterpiece”, even if we’re not “called to be artists in the specific sense of
the term:”[18]
This God of the Gospel is needed
even more by the artist as a person. All of us need him… so that we don’t
ultimately stop at the beauty that we create ourselves, so that our own works
are not exalted as idols for us, so that we don’t ultimately stop at the beauty
that we create ourselves, so that our own works are not exalted as idols for
us, so that we don’t idolize them. The temptation of the artist is an immense
temptation… for the artist to idolize his own work–to see a substitute for God,
an idol, in them… By idolizing one’s own work–the work of one’s imagination,
one’s paintbrush, one’s chisel, one’s body, one’s lips–by deifying all these
works, in some way we deify ourselves.
None of us can deify our own self.
None of us can deify our ego… We remember this: “A stream of Beauty flows
through you, but you yourself are not Beauty.”[19]
“A stream of
Beauty flows through you, but you yourself are not Beauty.” This is very, very
important for all of us to remember, whether or not we’re artists! If we
neglect this fact, we will inevitably try and try to “enflesh God” through our
own efforts, which will cause nothing but disappointment and disillusionment,
because no one can enflesh Him except for Him. We should humbly and lovingly
accept that even though fragments of beauty come to and through us (“A stream
of Beauty flows through you”), to try to “pull God down” and deify ourselves
and/or other creatures by thinking as if these are what would ultimately
satisfy is ignorant at best and spiritually dangerous at worst (“but you
yourself are not Beauty”). In other words, we should not give in to what the
late Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete calls the "primordial temptation:” “All
particular temptations are expressions of this one original or ‘primordial’
temptation. It is the temptation to believe that the fulfillment of the desires
of the human heart depends entirely on us.”[20]
If, for instance,
a BINI fan thinks that the beauty he sees in their music and visuals is the one
that would fully satisfy the yearnings of his heart, what do you think will
happen to him when the inevitable experiences of old age, ailment, and death
come to the members of his beloved pop group, experiences that even the most
gorgeous pop star will undergo, and which will reveal the finite nature of any
created beauty in this universe? Wouldn’t he be very heartbroken? He might even
start to despise them, because he created an expectation in his head that they
can never live up to.
Maybe you’ve
heard of stories about artists who suffered very unreasonably about their art,
to the point of even being the cause of their demise. This is the unfortunate
reality that we will all face if we deify created beauty, if we think we can
contain the infinite by the strokes of our own brush, the movements of our own
bodies, or the songs that come from our lips. If we have this expectation about
created beauty, then we will chase and chase this “false infinity” in finite
things, until we become frustrated and utterly disappointed.
But if we remain
strong enough by God’s grace to stay within this pilgrimage of beauty, if we
remain cognizant of the fact that only God can satisfy, that only He can marry
Ultimate Beauty with the human body, because He alone is this Ultimate
Beauty, then we can remain at peace with the fact that created beauty cannot –
and need not – satisfy the ache within. We will stop hurting others by
not putting them under unreasonable standards. We will lift that unnecessary
“heavy hand” on our own and on others’ shoulders, and we become receptive to
the satisfaction that only God can provide in the next life, even if in this
life, we are called to wait. As St. Augustine once said in a sermon:
When you would fill a purse,
knowing how large a present it is to hold, you stretch wide its cloth or
leather: knowing how much you are to put in it, and seeing that the purse is
small, you extend it to make more room. So by delaying [his gift] God
strengthens our longing, through longing he expands our soul, and by expanding
our soul he increases its capacity. So brethren, let us long, because we
are to be filled... That is our life, to be trained by longing: and our
training through the holy longing advances in the measure that our longings are
detached from the love of this world... Let us stretch ourselves out towards
him, that when he comes he may fill us full.[21]
(emphasis added)
Oh brothers and
sisters, let us have the courage to long, “because we are to be filled”! Let
us have the courage to be “stretched” in this life, so that in the next life,
our hearts will be big enough to “contain,” so to speak, the very Beauty that
we were meant to experience from the very moment we were conceived. Or, as
Pope Benedict XVI wrote in Spes Salvi: “Man was created for
greatness—for God himself; he was created to be filled by God. But his heart is
too small for the greatness to which it is destined. It must be stretched.”[22]
Yes, this pilgrimage of longing will be tough, this process of stretching
will hurt at times, for we are impatient creatures, but let us fix our gaze
toward the Divine Beauty revealed in Christ’s body, a body born from the
Virgin Mary on Christmas day, so that we won’t be distracted and fixated with
these other “bodies,” and so that these same bodies will be what they ought to
be: Icons that can lead us to heaven, not idols that will lead us to hell. Let
us be thankful for artists like BINI for reminding us that we are meant for
Beauty, but let us also invite them to take on this pilgrimage with us, because
no one in creation can be the end goal of our search for it. Let the truth
of the Gospel sanctify the truths of the culture!
Conclusion:
Beauty, the “Fertile Terrain” Where Gospel and Culture Can Meet
To conclude, I
would like to quote from a document from the Dicastery for Culture and
Education titled The Via Pulchritudinis, Way of Beauty. This document
emphasizes the need for beauty as a privileged “space” where we can allow
people to encounter the saving truth of Jesus Christ as revealed in the message
of the Gospel:
Contemplated with a pure soul,
beauty speaks directly to the heart, turning astonishment to marvel, admiration
to gratitude, happiness to contemplation. Thereby it creates a fertile
terrain to listen and dialogue with men, engaging the whole man—spirit and
heart, intelligence and reason, creative capacity and imagination. It is
unlikely to result in indifference; it provokes emotions, it puts in movement a
dynamism of deep interior transformation that engenders joy, feelings of
fullness, desire to participate freely in this same beauty, making it one's own
in interiorising it and integrating it into one's own concrete existence.[23]
(emphasis added)
There’s a two
extremes that man must avoid when it comes to created beauty: First, he must
avoid puritanism, which seeks to avoid created beauty and suppress our
desire for it; second, he must avoid hedonism, which seeks to idolize
created beauty and deify it as if it will completely satisfy our desires. If
the Incarnation is real – if what we celebrate during Christmas is real – then
both extremes are incorrect. Puritanism is false because God took on a created
human nature to communicate His Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. If God didn’t
despise created reality, i.e. human nature, then we shouldn’t either. But this
would also mean that hedonism is false because the Incarnation implies that
created reality is only fulfilling its purpose if its properly related to the
One True God, and not considered as an idol.
Many religious
people might be tempted to pursue the way of puritanism, and we must correct
that tendency. But many in today’s culture seem to be tempted to pursue the way
of hedonism. The Church’s way of dealing with beauty is the antidote against
this. We must not despise created beauty in light of the Incarnation, contra
the puritans. But, contrary to hedonism, we must also not idolize
created beauty in light of the same mystery of the Word made flesh. Let us use
beauty in all its forms, whether in nature or in art, as place of encounter, as
the “fertile terrain” where the Gospel’s proclamation of the Incarnation can
affirm the good things of the culture but also purify it and remove from it the
sinful tendencies it might spread amongst us. With the help of God, we can, in
some sense, "inculturate pop culture,” because the Gospel is for everyone!
Merry
Christmas and may the Incarnate Lord bless you and your families this season
and beyond!
[1] A quote from The Napoleon of Notting Hill.
(2018). Goodreads.com.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7215075-you-look-at-a-thing-nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine-times
[2] Part Three Section One Man’s Vocation Life In The Spirit Chapter One The Dignity Of The Human Person Article 8 Sin II. The Definition Of Sin. (n.d.). Www.vatican.va. https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_three/section_one/chapter_one/article_8/ii_the_definition_of_sin.html
[3] Seewald, P., & Benedict XVI. (2010). Light of the World. Ignatius Press. 130.
[4] Quoted in Wojtyla, K., West, C., Donaghy, B.,
Mangione, M., Loya, T., Settle, J., Maple, S. E., & MacManus, D. (2021). God
Is Beauty. TOBI Press. 150.
[5] Oscar Hestiada Jr. (2021, April 23). Wanna
get to know SB19? Just peep their fresh fashion drop. Lifestyle.INQ.
https://lifestyle.inquirer.net/501188/sb19-x-chynna-mamawal-fashion-collection/
[6] BINI’s Big Year: How The P-Pop Group
Became Global Superstars | GRAMMY.com. (2025). Grammy.com.
https://www.grammy.com/news/bini-world-tour-interview-biniverse-p-pop-big-year
[7] Reddit - The heart of the internet.
(2024). Reddit.com.
https://www.reddit.com/r/bini_ph/comments/1fjohes/list_of_all_bini_official_photocards/
[8] Meeting with artists in the Sistine Chapel
(November 21, 2009) | BENEDICT XVI. Www.vatican.va.
https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2009/november/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20091121_artisti.html
[9] Wojtyla, K., West, C., Donaghy, B., Mangione,
M., Loya, T., Settle, J., Maple, S. E., & MacManus, D. (2021). God Is
Beauty.
[10] Letter to Artists, (April 4, 1999) | John
Paul II. (1999, April 4). Www.vatican.va.
https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/letters/1999/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_23041999_artists.html
[11] God Is Beauty. 28-29.
[12] Ibid. 18.
[13] A quote by Augustine of Hippo. (2025).
Goodreads.com.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/669135-late-have-i-loved-you-o-beauty-ever-ancient-ever
[14] God Is Beauty. 83-84.
[15] Wojtyla, K. (1993). Love and
responsibility. Ignatius Press. 109.
[16] Pope Benedict XVI. (n.d.). “Not only My
Soul, But Even Every Fiber of my Flesh Is Made to Find Its Peace, Its
Fulfillment in God.” Catholicculture.org. Retrieved December 17, 2025, from
https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=10042
[17] Ibid.
[18] Letter
to Artists
[19] God is Beauty. 30-31
[20] Albacete, L. Magnificat. Holy Week.
2010. 124.
[21] St. Augustine of Hippo, Homily on the
First Letter of John,
[22] Pope Benedict XVI. (2007, November 30). Spe
Salvi (November 30, 2007) | BENEDICT XVI. Www.vatican.va.
https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html
[23] The Via Pulchritudinis, Way of Beauty. (2025). Cultura.va.
https://www.cultura.va/content/cultura/en/pub/documenti/ViaPulchritudinis.html
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