"Each particular Church should encourage the use of the arts in evangelization, building on the treasures of the past, but also drawing upon the wide variety of contemporary expressions so as to transmit the faith in a new 'language of parables.' We must be bold enough to discover new signs and new symbols, new flesh to embody and communicate the word, and different forms of beauty which are valued in different cultural settings, including those unconventional modes of beauty which may mean little to evangelizers, yet proved particularly effective for others. (Joy of the Gospel 167)" — Pope Francis

“Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade?” ~ Benjamin Franklin

They learn to love the beauty of order and design of color, and the nuances of shade and pattern all around them. They come to marvel, with each new discovery, at the complexity and intricacy of nature's laws and habits. And so in all they confront, they learn to discover and experience the creative loving presence of God and to develop an innate sense of restraint and discipline in the presence of the vast array of gifts poured on them each moment of their lives. In using these gifts, their all pervading mode of action is "not to spoil" but to love, to love that which God is freely allowing them to share, and in return, to use their humanity in bringing all back to God. This is the kind of human formation that recognises and appreciates man's nature as created to receive in openness to God in all of reality. It manifests esteem for man's capacity freely to respond in a human way and to become conscious of this response as his relation to God. ~ Becoming a Person in the Whole Christ, McMahon/Campbell page 50-51

No one has ever laughed at a pun who did not see in the one word a twofold meaning. To materialists this world is opaque like a curtain; nothing can be seen through it. A mountain is just a mountain, a sunset just a sunset; but to poets, artists, and saints, the world is transparent like a window pane - it tells of something beyond....a mountain tells of the Power of God, the sunset of His Beauty, and the snowflake of His Purity. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

"If you see any beauty in Christ, and say, "I desire to have that," God will work it in you." - G.V. Wigram