Beauty will save the world.
The expression printed in the title comes from Fyodor Dostoevsky, who in his novel “The Idiot”, puts it in the mouth of Prince Myshkin, not as a creation of this character –protagonist of the work-, but as a mention he makes of a theory: beauty will save the world.
But more than an invention of Dostoevsky, the theory manifests a dimension of reality. It dates back to Plato: being, truth, goodness, beauty. The beautiful –to kalón, pulchrum– is not limited to the aesthetic order; it is not reduced to physical beauty, but rises to the spiritual order, and means: noble, excellent, something like splendor that crowns reality.
Jesus Christ is kalón, for his personal beauty that attracted gazes and the acceptance of his Word. The Gospels narrate his transfiguration: human glimpse of the beauty of God, personally united to Him. Beauty hides in the circumstance of his Passion, to resurge in the features of the Kyrios risen. His glorious body preserves the sacred stigmata, which Thomas, the incredulous apostle, is invited to touch. The Lord, who is Beauty, is the Savior. His beauty is communicated in the Grace that the sacraments diffuse. The Eucharistic Presence is the beauty perceived in faith: one must believe to see. Faith is mysterious, sacramental vision, awaiting to become face-to-face vision. The beauty of the Risen One is gathered in the Ascension: beauty is divine-human.
The diffusion of Christianity, which is an offering of salvation, makes present the beauty of the Risen One, which will fully manifest in his return. The Lord’s appearances to believers show the divine-human beauty of the Incarnate Word; all witnesses agree that it is a dazzling, luminous beauty. What, then, will the beatific vision be, expression of the divine reality! Esse, verum, bonum, pulchrum, beauty in its place; thus the blessed perceive it. The beauty of the Kyrios is image of the beauty of the Triune God, because He Himself is one of the Three. The beauty of God became incarnate to save the world. The enigma of history consists in that men prefer ugliness, refusing to be saved by beauty. We do not know how the enigma of history is resolved, although we know that Christ is all in all; that is, that the Church is the deposit of the beauty that saves.
Man is made for beauty, that is why he is moved by the beauty of reality or art. Salvation is accepting that God is Beauty.
+ Héctor Aguer
Emeritus Archbishop of La Plata.
Buenos Aires, Wednesday, December 31, 2025.
Octave of Christmas. –