Dostoevsky’s Prophetic Voice

By Artur Suski, S.J. 

Credit: www.deaconsteve.files.wordpress.com

At one point in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot, Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin declares in a heated discussion: "Beauty will save the world!" Judging from Dostoevsky’s own personal letters and other writings, it is no secret that Prince Myshkin represents all the qualities Dostoevsky deemed the best aspects of a human being. Therefore, one may safely assume that this short yet powerful statement in The Idiot is truly of Dostoevsky himself. After all, as one reads his writings, one is able to appreciate the beauty with which he wrote. Nevertheless, this statement is somewhat ambiguous and unclear. What does Dostoevsky really mean by this? The Russian author Vladimir Soloviev states that Dostoevsky understood beauty to be inseparable from the other two transcendentals of goodness and truth. In fact, Soloviev says it so well that I dare not paraphrase it:

The Sensual Worshipper

By Artur Suski, S.J.

When we go to Church, we often tend to forget that we are both body and soul. We make efforts to block out what comes to us through the senses in order that we may all the better engage the spiritual. What ends up happening is that we see our body working against our soul. “Keep the sensual to a minimal,” you say. “Don’t add things that will pull you away from the spiritual,” you say.

But is this attitude healthy? One that should dominate our Sunday Masses? Are we not both body and soul? If so, should we not try to have a liturgy that involves both aspects, a liturgy that enables us to reach out to the Lord even through the senses? It is true that there are moments of inner contemplation in which we retreat from the senses; but for the most part, our lives do not allow for such a retreat. In that case, we have to discover how to engage the senses in such a way as to lead us closer to Jesus in our worship. A good liturgy would involve the five senses, yet in such a way as not to overwhelm us. Here are a few reflections on each of the senses: