In my father’s house, beauty was eclectic. Evenings he came home to a bunch of girls (and a son who had sometimes blessedly escaped our company). We would be watching TV or doing homework or quarreling. Five daughters, some gangly and giggling, in drug store creams and curlers, sometimes a sweet collective hostility, all in varying stages of awkwardness. He would walk into this still life of maturation and exclaim, What a lot of pulchritude!
At first, I assumed his words were an insult, to fit in with the ones we were hurling at each other. Then again, knowing him, the exclamation had to be Latin.
Pulchritude descends from the Latin adjective pulcher, which means “beautiful.”[1] I think my dad was attempting to set the hook in our (not so curious) minds and reel us into the practical uses of a dead language.
In another house far away and long ago, beauty was all askew: an outcast with a skin disease, a profligate perfume-waster, and rude guests. No beauty contest winners there. A single woman visiting the house of Simon the Leper had poured expensive perfume on Jesus’ head. Passover was two days away, and the single woman “prepared his body for burial”. Grumblers protested the act wasteful. Sure, it was a custom, but the man reclined at dinner alive and well. The whole world remembers it, as Jesus predicted.
Leave her alone. She has done a beautiful thing to me, said the guest of honor to the uncomfortable company. She has done what she could. She lavished the fragrance of beauty on him who was beauty in a word, in the Word made flesh. The woman consecrated the epitome of goodness, demonstrating her understanding of where true beauty comes from.
The English word translated ‘beautiful’ in this true story is ‘kalos’ (καλος ‘good’) in the Greek language.[2] The onlookers didn’t get it. Jesus, the only truly good person in the room was, of course, the only qualified judge of beauty. The woman was beautified by her intimate act (anointing a body for burial). In right relation to Jesus, she acted most beautifully in the situation.
Sometimes what we deem lovely must go to make way for the truly beautiful, like sacrificing alabaster and perfume. Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days (Jn 2:19). Christ references the most glorious structure of the day to foretell His resurrection. Another time, some of his disciples remarked how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God. Jesus answered, “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down” (Luke 21:6). Toppling temple stones and the rending of the magnificent temple curtain usher us into relationship with Him. C.S. Lewis captures the oddity and surprise of holy metamorphosis:
Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.[3]
Makoto Fujimura, referring to God as Supreme Artist, writes of the ancient Japanese art of kintsugi. A master mends broken bowls with lacquer and gold. A mended bowl is more valuable than one that has not been broken and is considered much more beautiful. When held up to the light, it glows through golden fissures.[4]
The hope of beauty re-gained reaches back to the Old Testament to promise that all ugliness will be crushed (Gen. 3:15). And beauty (‘yophi’-Hebrew)[5] extends beyond the individual to the church. The king will be enthralled by His bride. [6] Think of it….no more filthy rags of righteousness, no more stinking quasi-religion,[7] no more desecrated buildings, palaces, or people. Only beauty restored, and the beautified given ‘a beautiful headdress instead of ashes.’[8] We will gleam, satisfied with our beauty, because God came, Himself a tent, a tabernacle doomed for destruction, that we may forever taste, see, smell, hear, and touch beauty. Even those who have no language, little intelligence, or keen senses can perceive it, because the Beautifier looks at the heart.
They will sparkle in his land
like jewels in a crown.
How attractive and beautiful they will be! (Zech. 9: 16b,17 NIV)
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1 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pulchritude
2 Strong’s Concordance of the Greek Language, 2540.
3 Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity
4 https://makotofujimura.com/writings/kintsugi-grace-prismatic-art-beyond-the-rainbow
5 https://biblehub.com/hebrew/3308.htm
6 See Psalm 45
7 Amos 5: 21,22
8 Isaiah 61:5