Beauty: What It Is and Why It Matters

What we moderns have forgotten, the ancients knew well: true beauty heals the soul, draws us to God, and yields lasting happiness.

Rich with the wisdom of Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, and St. John Paul II, these pages unpack perennial truths about beauty and rivet them into your soul, opening the eyes of your understanding to the beauty all around us.

Offering an abundance of accessible examples, author John Mark Miravalle demonstrates that beauty is neither in the eye of the beholder, nor for the cultivated, the dreamer, or the "hopeless romantic" alone. On the contrary, the ability to understand, recognize, and delight in beauty readies all souls for heaven -- and makes it easier for us to get there.

From these pages, you'll learn:

• Why beauty is not just a matter of opinion.
• The virtues we need to perceive beauty and to enjoy it.
• How to determine whether an artwork is truly beautiful.
• The respective roles of reason and emotion in appreciating beauty.
• How the beauty of nature testifies to God's existence . . . while rejection of God obscures nature's beauty.

With the help of these pages, you'll receive fresh eyes to marvel again (or for the first time) at the beauty of nature, music, art, architecture, and, most importantly, the beauty of God, the fountainhead and exemplar of all things on earth that are beautiful.

John-Mark L. Miravalle is professor of Systematic and Moral theology at Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Maryland. He received his doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Regina Apostolorum in Rome. He is the author of three books, including Why God? Why Jesus? Why the Catholic Church? He has debated noted atheists on topics such as God's existence, same-sex marriage, and theistic morality. He and his wife Jessica have five children.