We’ve gathered some of our favorite online sources for beauty and faith. We hope you’ll find inspiration and feel your heart and mind drawn to the good, true and beautiful.

Catholic Answers

Do you have questions about the Catholic faith? Find your answers here. 

Sample from the website
How Beauty Draws Us to God – Paul Senz from Catholic Answers

Real Life Catholic

Do you wonder how to really live life as a Catholic? Chris Stefanick offers ways to find joy and see the beauty in life and those around you.

Sample from the website
God Loves You-But Did You Know He Also Respects You?

Catholics Come Home

Have you been away from the Church for months or even years? Find next steps and inspiration if you’re considering a return to the Catholic Church.

Ascension Press

Are you an active Catholic who wants to go deeper in their faith? You’ll find tons of options, including Fr. Mike Schmitz’s very popular Bible in a Year podcast.

Sample from the website
How Sacred Architecture Conveys Gospel Truth and Beauty

The Word on Fire

Would you like to share the faith more easily and effectively? Word on Fire should be a stop on your journey.

Sample from the website
Beauty Will Save the World-But How? Part I: Elements

Set Ablaze

Would you like to help reignite the Gospel in the Diocese of Sioux Falls? Find out why we need your help to Set Ablaze the hearts of Catholics in eastern South Dakota.

For Your Prayer and Reflection

O Lord,
beauty is your gift to me. Open my eyes to see and ears to hear the beauty that is all around me. May I find freedom, peace and hope through experiences of beauty, which lift my heart and mind to you who are Beautiful, and the source of all beauty.
Amen

Even before revealing himself to man in words of truth, God reveals himself to him through the universal language of creation, the work of his Word, of his wisdom: the order and harmony of the cosmos—which both the child and the scientist discover—“from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator,” “for the author of beauty created them.”

(Catechism of the Catholic Church 2500)
Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savor life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine could express in incomparable terms: “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you!”

Saint John Paul II in his Letter to Artists
The way of beauty replies to the intimate desire for happiness that resides in the heart of every person. Opening infinite horizons, it prompts the human person to push outside of himself, from the routine of the ephemeral passing instant, to the Transcendent and Mystery, and seek, as the final goal of the ultimate quest for wellbeing and total nostalgia, this original beauty which is God Himself, creator of all created beauty. … The voice of beauty helps open ourselves up to the light of truth, and it lightens the human condition helping it seize the meaning of pain.

(The Way of Beauty (Via Pulchritudinis))
“This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. It is beauty, like truth, which brings joy to the heart of man and is that precious fruit which resists the wear and tear of time, which unites generations and makes them share things in admiration.”

(Pope Paul VI, Message to Artists)
Contemplated with a pure soul, beauty speaks directly to the heart, turning astonishment to marvel, admiration to gratitude, happiness to contemplation. Thereby it creates a fertile terrain to listen and dialogue with men, engaging the whole man—spirit and heart, intelligence and reason, creative capacity and imagination.

(The Way of Beauty (Via Pulchritudinis))
"Indeed, beauty is one of mankind’s greatest needs; it is the root from which the branches of our peace and the fruits of our hope come forth. Beauty also reveals God because, like him, a work of beauty is pure gratuity; it calls us to freedom and draws us away from selfishness."

Pope Benedict XVI

Have questions? Contact us at discipleship@sfcatholic.org