From afar, the rock formation rising from the ocean was indeed a rugged, beautiful thing, enough to draw me across the beach and climb up its back, but not until I reached the top did I realize just how beautiful. Settling onto a little elbow jutting out over the water, I looked down and saw beneath my perch a sight that could have been tropical: gray-amber kelp blooming from the submerged rocks, swishing languidly back and forth in the translucent turquoise tide. I could see the seabed below, perhaps ten feet down.
As I began thumbing my red crystal beads, I wondered how to enter into the Sorrowful Mysteries whilst immersed in such dazzling creation.
Jesus’s words came to mind: I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
And I suddenly understood. He had suffered the lash, the thorns, the cross, the desolation, to give me this spectacular day. I don’t mean the transitory beauty, because even an atheist could appreciate this view. No, beauty becomes that much sweeter when faith is present, because one realizes that everything beautiful on earth is a gift of Love and merely a foretaste of Heaven. Life abundant flows from this world into the next.
