From The Catholic Herald (UK)
Pope attends concert at Castel Gandolfo in his honor
Beautiful art is not just for cultural enrichment but is an important
way to experience God and become aware of the human thirst for the
infinite, Pope Benedict XVI has said.
A sculpture, a painting, a
poem or a piece of music can arouse a feeling of joy when it becomes
apparent it is something more than just a chunk of marble, a canvas
covered with colours, or words or notes on a page, he said.
“It’s
something bigger, something that speaks and touches your heart; it
carries a message and lifts the spirit,” he said as he held his weekly
general audience in the town square at Castel Gandolfo.
“Art is
like an open doorway to the infinite, toward a beauty and truth that go
beyond everyday reality,” he told 3,000 visitors and pilgrims present
for the audience.
The Pope continued a series of talks on the importance of prayer and the need to set aside some time in one’s busy day for God.
One way people can sense God’s presence or strengthen their relationship with him is through beautiful art, he said.
An
artist is often trying to discover the true or deeper meaning of
reality through “a language of forms, colours and sounds,” he said.
“Art can express and render visible humanity’s need to go beyond what one sees, revealing a thirst and quest for the infinitive.
“Art can open the mind’s eye and one’s heart, pushing us upward” toward the heavens, he said.
The
“true paths toward God” that inspire prayer and strengthen one’s
relationship with God, the Pope said, are works of art that express the
faith and spring from the artist’s own faith in God.
Pope Benedict praised the Jewish artist Marc Chagall,
who created a large series of illustrations of the Bible, which the
Russian-French artist called “the greatest source of poetry of all
time”.
The Pope also fondly recalled his attendance at a 1981
Munich concert of Leonard Bernstein conducting music by Johann Sebastian
Bach.
When the last note of Bach’s cantatas was played “I felt,
not out of reasoning, but deep in my heart, that what we had listened to
had given me something of the great composer’s faith, and it compelled
me to praise and thank the Lord,” the Pope said.
He said he also
turned to Lutheran Bishop Johannes Hanselmann, who was sitting next to
him, and they both agreed that “Anyone who has heard this knows that the
faith is true.”
The Pope also recalled how sacred music had the power to convert the French poet, dramatist and diplomat Paul Claudel who, though he was raised Catholic, had turned away from the faith.
Claudel
had gone to church one Christmas in Paris’s Basilica of Notre Dame to
argue with those gathered there, but, instead, when he heard the choir
chant the “Magnificat,” he felt God’s presence and became devoutly
Catholic, the Pope said.
The Pope invited everyone to take
advantage of the numerous works of art and architecture that “express
the faith and call us to a relationship with God”.
He asked that
museum-hopping “not just be an occasion for cultural enrichment, but be
able to become a moment of grace, a motivation to strengthen our ties
and dialogue with the Lord, to stop and contemplate the ray of beauty
that strikes us – almost wounding us deep inside – and invites us to
rise up toward God”.
Later that day at the papal villa, the Pope
was treated to a concert in his honour by Italian Cardinal Domenico
Bartolucci, a composer and former director of the Sistine Chapel Choir.
Three
soloists, a chamber choir and a philharmonic orchestra were to perform
four works composed by Cardinal Bartolucci, including a new work
entitled Benedictus for soprano, chorus and orchestra. It was composed
specifically for the August 31 event.
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