Consecrated life: the challenge to manifest God’s beauty.

Abstract

From Aquinas' doctrine on beauty, and the identification of three conditions that beautiful bodies possess: integrity, proportion and clarity, is seen the way that those aspects are present on the consecrated life - in Aquinas' doctrine as in the last Pope's teaching. The consecrated one, as is specially dedicated to the supreme aim of men, God, tends to carity's perfection, which, supported by grace, is predisposed and prepared with the practice of virtues, specially on gospel's advices. Virtues take obstacle to achieve the ends, and also dispose an order according to the own nature. From charity to God and from this order or proportion, come charity's works, which are an irradiation of the love living inside. That way, in consecrated life, perfection gives integrity, virtues guarantee proportion, as charity towards God, united to all mentioned before, irradiates the clarity and splendour of God's beauty, in the charity of fraternal an brotherly love.