I’m at work, painting in the studio and as the hours wind down I’ve been thinking a lot about Fr. Robert Barron’s assessment of a good way to go about the New Evangelization,

move from beauty to goodness to truth*,

in relation to Benedict’s pontificate. Most expected him to begin with truth and he did but not with the hard hand as they thought. No. Rather be began with love-in-truth, namely beauty.

Pope Benedict XVI has ceaselessly shown beauty, then goodness, then truth to a world that wanted him to demonize the world so the world would be justified in demonizing him. It still does but after his beautiful pontificate the world doesn’t have a reptilian leg to stand on.

*A paraphrase of what is expressed here, Evangelizing through Beauty.