Beauty and Justice St. Bonaventure defines justice as “restoring to beauty what has been deformed.” As Sylvania Franciscans, we believe that nature, the arts and culture, and the goodness around us nurture our souls and make us sensitive to the sufferings of our Mother Earth and her peoples. John Schramm once noted that he had difficulty in the mornings, deciding whether to save the world or to savor the world. We seek to live that tension, always facing injustice head-on, naming it for what it is and working to end it, but also always attentive to the good, the true and the beautiful around us.

"Beauty does not stand alone in the universe, isolated and remote, under glass and precious for its rarity. Beauty is the bridge to justice. It's the lost beauty of nature that warns us against pollution. It's the beauty of a child's face that brings us to see the ugliness of racism. It’s the beauty of life that brings us to rage against the injustice that obstructs it for anyone. Beauty is the glue that holds the world together.
 To bring peace, to nurture hope, to wage justice, then, it is necessary to teach beauty or nothing is too valuable to be destroyed. We may well be spending far too much time teaching skills and productivity and efficiency and far too little time on music and art and poetry and flowers and literary appreciation. To raise a child well, we must seed a place in their souls for beauty. To build buildings that do not become ghettos, we must be willing to spend as much time on their beauty as we do on their function. Unless we make beauty the centerpiece of our lives, we are not really living, we are only breathing. If in this millennium we really want justice, we must learn to cultivate beauty." Joan Chittister, OSB

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Beauty Cards
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