Pray for Artists

Praying with the Holy Father

August. This month the Holy Father asks us to pray “that artists of our time, through their ingenuity, may help everyone discover the beauty of creation”. What does Pope Francis mean by asking us to pray thus? Quite clearly, in the first instance, he means to tell us what he expects of the arts, returning to a theme raised in the first year of his pontificate: “In every age the Church has called upon the arts to give expression to the beauty of her faith and to proclaim the gospel message of the grandeur of God's creation, the dignity of human beings made in His image and likeness, and the power of Christ's death and resurrection to bring redemption and rebirth to a world touched by the tragedy of sin and death.”

Pope Francis meeting Martin Scorsese

An art in which beauty is concealed rather than revealed, faith is denigrated, creation is belittled in comparison with technological progress, humanity is degraded, and the spiritual knowledge necessary to the Christian encounter with the mystery of our redemption and that of the entire created order is resolutely excluded in favour of an atheistic materialism is not an art worthy of the name; it is an art we should shun for the good of our souls. An art which is not “an expression of our hope in the coming of that Kingdom whose beauty, harmony and peace are the expectation of every human heart and the inspiration of mankind's highest artistic aspirations” is unworthy of the dignity of those created in the image of the divine.

As is well known, the Holy Father does not watch television.

by Prayer Crusader St Philip Howard