The Music of Beauty
Simone Riva - Imagine a city that is always in a hurry, with the center full of people, all busy with their own affairs.
Imagine that at some point, on a street in that same city, you hear an unusual sound in the distance, coming closer and closer as you walk, breaking away from the indistinct crowd of other sounds. Suddenly, you see hands moving as if to the rhythm of an ancient dance, and the harp responds with its strings to those intertwined fingers, as if in dialog.
That was my city a few days ago, on a warm summer evening, with people walking in the streets and a harp playing in the center of the city, as if to evoke nostalgia for another music: that of beauty. These days, in conversations with people, there are often questions about vacations taken or to be taken, places visited, companies visited, books read, landscapes enjoyed... Beauty is suddenly regaining prominence in the stories and even images that fill social media. Summer has in it this urgency to return and tell each other about beauty.
All of life carries this question in its lap, with its ear strained to this music that suddenly finds its way into the everyday. But what makes it not an illusion? Last week, at the cemetery, I noticed a detail. It was a sunny afternoon, which seemed to make marbles and bronzes speak. I pass a place that I must have passed who knows how many times. I turned and noticed an extraordinary statue.
Two towering figures of Christ and the Apostle Thomas stand upright.
The Risen One has his robe open and the wound in his side is clearly visible. Thomas was about to touch that wound, as the Gospel tells us: "Eight days later, the disciples were back in the house, and Thomas was with them. Jesus came behind closed doors, stood in their midst, and said, "Peace be with you!" Then He said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and look at My hands; stretch out your hand and put it in My side; and be no longer an unbeliever, but a believer" (Jn 20:26-27).
But the detail that struck me is that Christ, with his hand, seems to be holding Thomas' hand, as if to say to him, "Don't let go! Make of this touch the heart of the verification of everything you will experience". The scene takes place in a meeting of bodies, in an intensity of gazes that seem to give birth to a great embrace that transcends the event. And the fingers of one and the other come together as if searching for each other as if playing an invisible harp whose music could reach us.
From these wounds flows the certainty that we are not destined for illusion. The words of the Pope in a 2018 Angelus come to mind: "I want to see Jesus, but I want to see him from the inside. Enter into his wounds and contemplate the love of his heart for you, for you, for you, for me, for everyone".
This pressing of “you, me, everyone” sounds like the notes of a score, that of friendship with Christ.
What a gift to enjoy the summer and the holidays with this music in our ears.
Unrevised translation by the author. Out of the Choir - Il giornale di Monza. Download.
