Evangelizing Children with Beauty

A conversation recalls a key element in Culture Recovery

As my daughter and her husband anticipate the birth of their first child, we have been having some delightful conversations with them about how to raise children so that the children “catch” the faith in the process. No one has a perfect recipe for how to do it—free will being operative and all that—but we were discussing strategies. I offered my particular strategy: fiercely curating their books, toys, movies, and overall home environment—not to keep them from sin but to teach them to love beauty. My daughter laughed, “That’s why I’m a snob.” Joking aside, I told my son-in-law that it was actually a catechetical strategy.

I explained my philosophy to my son-in-law, which I will try to represent here in three pictures. As a catechist and a Montessorian, I had early on learned the importance of preparing an environment when you are teaching young children. And I had absorbed the lesson that the environment for learning should be beautiful. Since our home is the primary place of learning, that meant to me that I had to work seriously on beautifying our home environment. Obviously that meant we had to begin by creating a loving and respectful and cheerful home by being loving, respectful cheerful people—still working on that—but practically speaking, this meant the decor as well.

Children below the age of reason encounter the world sensually—sensorially. Since they have no sense yet of right or wrong, it is important—crucially important—to help them love goodness by connecting it to beauty. You have to show them what goodness looks like, sounds like, tastes like, feels like. This is why I was adamantly against any shoddy toys, picture books, ugly cartoons, and especially pallid images of Christ or Mary or the saints.

It wasn’t enough for books and toys to be “not bad.” I sought out books and pictures that were beautiful. It took a lot of pro-active search, especially in the early years before the internet, but it paid off (or so my daughter told me). My goal was to show the Source of Goodness in a way that was attractive and interesting to children. I tried to involve the natural world as well, having cross-pollinated Montessori philosophy early on with what I gathered from Waldorf and other methods which stressed the importance of immersing children in the natural world and incorporating the rhythm of the seasons into the home. For Catholic me, this meant the liturgical seasons as well.

To explain, I pointed randomly to the centerpiece on our dining room table where we were seated. “This is catechesis,” I said. Here’s the centerpiece (I did not style this picture much, apologies on the wax):

I explained it was important that the image of Christ be beautiful. (Side note: I happen to love this particular image of the Sacred Heart, a gift from one of my students, which is from the Bethlehem Carving Group, Christians who have been carving olive wood statues for generations. Please support them during this difficult time!) But part of the impact comes from the natural elements —the autumn leaves, the dried flowers, the pumpkins. During the daytime, these are further reflected by the view of the yard and trees outside.

To demonstrate, I removed the statue.

Some Catholics might have a centerpiece like this one—which might be beautiful and connected to the natural world, but it doesn’t really have any intrinsic or overt connection to the Faith. Nothing wrong with it, but it misses the opportunity, somehow.

Other Catholics might think, in the name of simplicity, that’s it’s enough to merely have the statue. But children need more than just the core elements of the Faith. They need to see those elements embedded in an environment, because that is how they learn. And yes, we adults need this sort of catechesis too.

To me, the elements of Faith are more real, more incarnated—when they are visually connected to the natural world we so admire and love and to the rhythm of the home. My daughter and son-in-law know I redo the centerpiece every Sunday when setting the table for brunch, refreshing the vases, cleaning the wax….but I do it not only because I love beauty but because I want my children to love the Faith more. At least, that is my strategery, and my hope.

Because I feel the process of transmitting the faith between the generations can be made easier by embedding the Faith in beauty, in a way that catches the attention and holds it and connects it to the liturgy and God’s creation. That is how Culture Recovery can happen.

Blessings on your weekend, and please share your thoughts!