Mary's Beauty

I too, was inspired by this discussion of beauty. I remembered one of my favorite parts of my favorite book, Bishop Fulton Sheen's "Three to Get Married," that I had to look up and share...

In his chapter on reverence for the body, Bishop Sheen discusses how the body is precious because of the preciousness of the soul within it. The body is holy because the soul is holy. He then goes on to describe Mary.

"Mary's beautiful purity must have been such that it attracted less the eyes than the souls of men. No one would have loved her mind or soul because of the beauty of her body, but they would have loved her beauty of soul as almost to forget she even had a body. It is very likely that a human eye, looking on Mary, would scarcely have been conscious that she was beautiful to the eye. Just as corrupt men are made pure in thought by the sight of an innocent child, so all fleshly thoughts would have been left behind by one vision of the Immaculate Mother. As one listens to a consummate artist playing the piano, one forgets that he has hands; so, in the ravishing melodies of Mary's Immaculateness, one would have hardly averted to that fleshly keyboard from which they came...

The cult of the body is best served by the cult of the soul. It is a by-product, not a goal; it is a fruit, not a root. That is why no one ever becomes truly beautiful until he stops trying to make himself beautiful and begins making himself good. Mary was not 'full of grace' because she was beautiful; she was beautiful because she was full of grace."

I could not have compared to the wisdom and beauty of the words of Bishop Fulton Sheen.