One needs only to ponder the creative and intricate nature of all of God’s creation to see the Divine Artist (God) at work. If we look at the formation of a child in the womb of its mother and how amazing newborns are, one realizes there is a Divine Intelligence that knows how to creatively and perfectly make each of us with our own unique characteristics yet in His own image and likeness.
God chooses each of us to be a creative expression of His goodness based on our vocations as married, single, consecrated men and women or clergy. We each have a role to play in allowing God’s creative design of each of us to be relished and shared, to bring Him glory and honor, and to share His creative love with others.
This month we honor and thank our Divine Artist and those He inspires to use the gifts He gave them to refresh and renew us.
One of God’s amazing divine “artistic” expressions is His creative design of sacramental grace. When Jesus came down from heaven, but before He died for our sake, He established the sacramental life of the Church.
For example, at the Last Supper which we celebrate on Holy Thursday each year, Jesus instituted the priesthood and the Eucharist. He called His apostles and empowered them with the capacity to change (in the person of Christ) bread and wine into His Body and Blood so we would have spiritual food for our journey from this world to the next.
God as the Divine Artist calls and designs ordinary human beings like me to be able to consecrate us to do supernatural things (sacraments for example) so that His creative way of sharing His Divine Life in the Holy Eucharist can be passed on from generation to generation. This month we give thanks that God called and consecrated Fr. Michael Kapperman and Fr. Tony Klein to be priests and Jeffrey Schulte, Jacob Doty and Scott Miller as transitional deacons so the artistic expression of God’s sacramental love can be shared through them as they serve.
In our feature article this month on artists, we can also see how God blessed certain people, certainly not me, to have human artistic abilities. I have long marveled at human artists who are blessed with the talent to formulate an idea in their imagination and mind and then creatively express it on canvas, stone, paper, etc.
The artists that most inspire me are the ones who allow the Divine Artist to work in and through their natural gifts to produce Godly inspired images that express the essence of all that is good, true and beautiful as God made things to be.
This month as we honor our Divine and human artists, may we be filled with delight as we ponder how their artistic expressions bring us all that is good, true and beautiful. A special word of gratitude to those who contributed to this month’s articles on artists.
Wishing you all the best in the Lord.
