Reject Cheap Counterfeits: Only Authentic Goodness, Truth, and Beauty Bring Peace

“The best evangelistic strategy is to capture people with the beautiful, then enchant them with the good, and then lead them to the true,” said Bishop Robert Barron. It is more than an evangelization strategy, though: It is the path to happiness.

I warn my students at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kanas, not to be fooled by cheap substitutes for what they are seeking.

And I know exactly what they are seeking.

“Why was the world created?” the Compendium of the Catechism asks, and answers: “for the glory of God who wished to show forth and communicate his goodness, truth, and beauty” (No. 53).

Like Hannah Morais said in her student profile on Friday, we all seek God, and on earth that means we have an insatiable desire for goodness, truth, and beauty, because God is totally good, infinitely true, and unfathomably beautiful. As St. Augustine said, “Because you made us for yourself, O Lord, our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

But authentic goodness has to cost something; real truth has to widen your scope; and what is truly beautiful must be real. I warn my students that there are many counterfeits out there, and if they try to slake their insatiable thirst with cheap substitutes, they will remain restless, and never find true peace.

We long for goodness — kindness and justice — but shortcuts take us away from what we want.

When Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” we know just what he means. We wish we could relieve every suffering person, free every oppressed person, and right every wrong. We admire Mother Teresa for ministering to “the poorest of the poor” and agree with Martin Luther King that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

But then we discover that “virtue signaling” is an easy way to feel like we have gotten what we want: Our loving social media post makes us feel like Mother Teresa and our bold bumper sticker makes us feel like Martin Luther King.

But if we satisfy ourselves with being seen as good rather than doing real good, we have taken the focus off of God and neighbor and put it on ourselves.

We long for the honest truth — we want to know things as they really are. But we can mistake parts of the truth for the whole thing.

When Jesus says “the truth will set you free,” we understand what that means. We don’t want lies that make us feel comfortable; we want to know what is really going on. We admire people who sacrificed something real for the truth — like Scott Hahn and Joe Schmid.

But in our world, where we are inundated with information, it is easy to mistake a piece of the truth for the whole thing. We make politics our lens and judge the world by it — or science, or economics, or even religion if we aren’t careful.

One quick test for your truth detector is this: If it makes you feel more humble, it’s probably truth; if it makes you feel more proud, it might be an imposter. Or this: If it makes the world bigger and more wonderful, that’s good; if it makes you bigger and the world smaller, watch out.

Beauty draws us and convinces us. But we fall for slick graphics and superficial thrills.

Jesus was beautiful. John saw him in his essence (twice) and said, “His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.” And yet, Jesus “had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him,” Isaiah prophesied.

St. Thomas Aquinas said beautiful things have integritas, consonantia, and claritas — integrity, harmony, and radiance. Thus the integrity of a dead tree branch in the winter makes it more beautiful than a painting, and the radiance of the wrinkled and stooped Mother Teresa made her more beautiful than a supermodel.

But Instagram filters, fashion obsession, and flashy AI art undermine integritas, consonantia, and claritas — and the more we use them to set our standard of beauty, the lower our standard gets.

To test your appreciation of beauty ask: Does this inspire me or merely excite me? Does it make me long for innocence, or the opposite?

Often, a saint has followed a particular “transcendental” all the way to God. So can we.

The late Father Benedict Groeschel said we each have available to us the fundamental “approaches to God” that the saints followed — the transcendentals: goodness, truth, and beauty.

For instance, St. Francis was drawn by goodness, and is known for his greeting “Pace e Bene,” “peace and all good.” St. Thomas Aquinas’ said, “Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus,” “Truth is conforming one’s intellect to reality,” and that became his life’s work. St. Augustine said, “Late have I loved you, beauty, so ancient and so new!”

Like them, we will each have a transcendental approach to God that suits us best. Our job is to follow it faithfully, accepting no substitutes, until we meet its Source.

Image: A bust from the Frederick Hart collection at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.

By Tom Hoopes